12 points, seven rebounds, two assists and three steals, that's the stats Kevin Looney handed over in game 2 of the Finals.
+24 plus-minus on the field, tied for the first place in the team with Stephen Curry.
When did Kevin Looney become an indispensable member of the Warriors?
This season's regular season 82 full attendance, 80 starts, is the team's rebounding king, block king,
The playoffs have come all the way to the present, both in the first round of the fierce appointment of the teacher, the West Final in the Lone Rangers inside the big kill. Now with the tough and tough Celtics in the East, Coach Kerr has activated him once again.
Everyone knows that the Warriors' most murderous is the "death five small", but they know that there is no such a blue-collar center.
At a time when people are talking about the Iron Triangle has been working together for the tenth year, few people remember that this is also Looney's seventh season for the Warriors.
Aside from the Iron Triangle and Iguodala, he is already the oldest warrior today.
First, he is not the strongest, but the most suitable center for the Warriors
In the 2015 Draft, the Warriors, who had just won the championship, won Kevin Looney from UCLA (UCLA) with the 30th pick in the first round.
In high school, his all-round skills were once considered to be the "next Kevin Durant", but successive injuries not only made him lose speed and explosiveness, but also caused the draft market to drop again and again, almost falling out of the first round.
For the warriors who were strong at the time, choosing him was more like a touch of the award.
But the injury to his hip left him playing five games totaling 21 minutes in his rookie season (2015-16).
At the time of the 73-win Warriors, the young interior presence was too low, and could only be regarded as an investment for the future.
The following year, with durant joining, and with Pachulia, McGee, Damian Jones and other interior lines on the team, Looney still had very little playing time, not even playing a minute in the playoffs.
In this way, he "vaguely" won his first championship trophy.
But from the start of the 2017-18 season, the young interior lineman gradually entered Cole's "arsenal".
He played 66 games that year and even made four starts. Aging and injury gradually found the Warriors, West left, Pachulia, McGee aged, and the burden the team gave him heavier and heavier.
When it came to the game with the Houston Rockets, he was even put on the starting line to play against the "pie machine" Capela.
Rebounding, card slots, scrambling, blocking, although he will always be the most inconspicuous one in the starting lineup, although at a critical moment Cole will still withdraw him to take out the death five.
But he still willingly received the basic salary, and did his best to become the most silent shield behind Curry, Durant, and Clay.
In the 2019 Finals, people only remember the helplessness of the lightning injury after Durant's comeback, the pain of Clay's cruciate ligament rupture, and the helplessness of Curry sitting in the backcourt.
But in the second game, he was broken in a rib while fighting Leonard, and after only one break, he returned from the line of fire after being considered by doctors to be reimbursed for the season.
He didn't have Durant's ability to change the world, didn't have Clay's projection without false hair, but in the face of the team's plight of injured soldiers at the time, he chose to come back in the contract year.
In the 2019-20 season, Looney played only 20 games due to a left hip injury, watching the team have a poor record of only 15 wins.
But since last season, Kerr has been reluctant to take him out of the starting lineup anymore.
Although the Warriors' death five small system is strong, it is too expensive for the physical strength of core players, and to survive the 82 regular season games in the mountains, it is necessary to have a blue collar like Looney to support the team's interior attack and defense.
What's more, in the warriors' six years, except for Dream Green, probably no one in the league is more familiar with this offensive and defensive system than him.
Now when Durant and Barnes are replaced by Wiggins and Poole, when old teammates Livingston, Pachulia, and Barbosa have all entered the team management position, when Iguodala is too old to play,
Looney became the only "sole seedling" outside the Iron Triangle to witness the warriors' two brilliant stages.
Now, no one doubts his importance in the team anymore.
Second, maybe this is love - on Looney's inseparability to the Warriors
At the end of the 2018-19 season, Looney, who became a free agent, had the opportunity to go elsewhere to earn more.
After all, with two championships in hand and a wealth of playoff experience, it's too easy for the 23-year-old to get a decent contract.
His choice was to stay with the Warriors. 3 years and 15 million, far less than their own value in the free agent market.
In the NBA world, we've seen too many role players rushing after winning championships "gilded."
Although Lew experienced Iverson's century span in the early 2000s, after earning two rings, He immediately joined the Washington Wizards in 2001-02 with double salary.
In the 2015-16 finals, Curry became famous in the 2015-16 Finals, and after getting the ring, he quickly signed a four-year, $39 million contract with the Bucks.
For these "bottom players", loyalty and belonging are not in their consideration, and rice bowl and money are their top concerns.
Yet Looney, who already has two championship rings, seems to be pursuing something more.
"I love the warrior family atmosphere and I hate moving. Because I'm going through the best of my life. ”
Probably since Cousins left the Warriors in 2019, the reinforcement of the team's interior line has been the most concerned topic for Warriors fans.
From Gobert to Sabonis Jr., from Porzingis to Turner, every center who is a little famous in the league has a little bit of a scandal with Golden State.
Even the Warriors themselves signed Wiseman with their precious eye in the 2020 draft.
But the team's starting center is still Looney.
The Warriors are such a special team.
Their killer is Death Five, and their core driver is Curry Green's duo.
This dooms the team's fifth position to be a "fake starter", a spectator who can only stare at the bench at a critical moment.
Any interior star with a slight reputation and strength will not accept such a team treatment.
So since Bogut, the Warriors' interior line is either the league ronin such as Pachulia and McGee, or former stars like Cousins and West who lower themselves for the championship, or the low rookies such as Jones and Bale.
This kind of "grievance" is really not something that ordinary people can accept.
Looney did it, however, and in order to stay with the team he not only accepted a lower salary. And
You can not go up a minute in some games, shouting on the sidelines,
It can also be plugged and played, and Cole makes the flag a finger and goes up to play with the opponent.
As long as the team needs, as long as it can win, it can do anything.
If you want to ask why? Maybe it's love.
He never saw himself as a star, just as part of the Warriors' family.
Third, every championship team is indispensable to such "honest people"
In "A Generation of Grandmasters", Zhao Benshan said:
"If someone in a door is a face, someone has to be a face."
The same is true of the NBA, Jordan, Kobe, LeBron, Curry enjoy the highest standard of courtesy and praise, but basketball is a five-person sport, if you really want to go all the way to the championship, you must have a large number of people to dedicate and sacrifice.
Fisher and Bryant entered the NBA the same year, and he was the team's third scorer in the last two of the three consecutive championships. But it wasn't until the 0.4-second kill in 2004 that people really recognized the cold-blooded killer.
In 2004, he left the Lakers, and although Kobe Bryant killed the world alone, the team's record was weak. When he returned again in 2007, the Lakers reached the finals three times in three years and won two championships.
The Warriors' current head coach, Steve Kerr, received a pass from Jordan in Game 6 of the 1997 Finals to complete the championship kill, making the "god of basketball" the most classic throw of the pot, without staining his unbeaten image with a trace of dust.
In the 97-98 Finals, he was also the bulls' first choice to "entangle" Stockton.
Later at the celebration, Cole said:
"Phil said during the timeout, Michael (Jordan), you shoot the last shot. But Michael said he wasn't feeling well, we'd better change someone, so why didn't we give it to Steve?
I thought to myself, well, I have to save Michael one more time."
It was one of the most "debauched" of Cole's career, and more often than not he was a mild-mannered but cold-blooded killer.
Haslem, the oldest player in the league today, was the bravest interior blue-collar worker around O'Neal when he first won the championship in 2006, and he was the most reliable substitute on the bench during the 2012-13 Big Three, and now he is the team's spiritual totem and temperament symbol.
He would scold on the sidelines when Butler was not performing well,
Fight back when you look down on the heat,
After Morris was turned over by Jokic, he shouted:
"We're waiting for you brothers in Miami."
In the history of the Heat, glory has always belonged to Riley, sharks, Wade, James, and he is the most loyal dog who guards all this.
Every great team is indispensable to these honest people and tough men of ordinary value, but they are willing to go to the soup for the team.
Gorgeous superstars are responsible for taking over at the most critical moments, enjoying the loudest cheers,
And they are responsible for grinding their teeth and sucking blood in their backs, and inserting knives in both ribs, which is their fate and their responsibility.
Thanks to them, sports competitions can be called "peacetime wars".