Kevin Durant a Worthwhile Goal Thanks to Barnes and Looney
Kevin Durant is a worthwhile goal for the Warriors as Harrison Barnes’ contract situation and Kevon Looney’s potential could give the team flexibility.
A couple weeks ago, the ultimate “trade-machine” deal—without really even a whiff of a legitimate “source close by”—broke: Kevin Durant to the Warriors this summer.
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I wrote it off as a click-happy story good for boosting traffic and little else. For the Warriors are a historically great team—perhaps even the best regular season team of all time—and to shake up the nucleus and chemistry for another superstar seemed like a pretty silly proposition.
It’s widely thought that for the Warriors to acquire Durant they would have to lose Harrison Barnes, Andre Iguodala, and maybe either Andrew Bogut or Festus Ezeli. Barnes and Iguodala, of course, are integral to the crunch-time lineup; Barnes has the length and speed to slot in as a small-ball four, and Iguodala’s elite passing and defense serve as the perfect complement to Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson.
Sure, to acquire Durant the Warriors wouldn’t lose one of their Big Three—Curry, Draymond Green, and Thompson—but it would mean losing both of the other players who make up their best five.
Yet Harrison Barnes is set to hit restricted free-agency this summer, and reportedly turned down a 4 year, $64 million contract towards the beginning of the season, despite it being in the ballpark of what Draymond Green and Klay Thompson will be making.
If Barnes is going to command a bigger contract than that on the open market, I think the Warriors should let him walk. Barnes is a nice role player, one who can make open threes, finish in transition, and play good defense; but he has nowhere near the importance of Green, and much less than Thompson. He, more than anyone else on the team, in my opinion, is the product of playing with better players.
Remember the first season when Iguodala joined the Warriors, and Mark Jackson had Barnes coming off the bench? He shot 39.9% from the field, compared to 47.5% the last two seasons while playing with the starters. He was abysmal in a bigger role; he can’t, and shouldn’t, be asked to create his own shot. His current role—shooting open threes, finishing in transition, and playing tough defense—is the perfect one for him, and I don’t the Warriors should commit around $20 million (what other teams project to offer him) per year for essentially a role player.
In fact, I think Kevon Looney, the Warriors’ rookie out of UCLA, would fit Barnes’s role admirably for the future. Looney has sat out the majority of the season after undergoing surgery, but now he’s back on the active roster, and I hope he’ll get the opportunity to show what I saw from him in college.
At UCLA, Looney, who is 20 years old and 6-9 and 220 lbs, was pretty raw offensively, but averaged nearly a double-double with 11.6 points and 9.2 rebounds, good for second in the Pac-12. And he led the team in three-point percentage, shooting 47% on an admittedly rather small sample size (22-53 in his lone season). And when I saw him play Stanford, he exploded for 27 points and 19 rebounds.
Looney’s impressively strong, long, and athletic, and a capable shooter. And, more importantly, he’s locked in for the next three seasons at an average of about $2 million, a huge drop off from what they’d be paying Barnes.
And to return to Durant, I think the contracts next season would make it feasible to ask another question for the Warriors future at the SF position: would you want Durant and Looney, or Barnes and Iguodala?
Durant, to me, is one of the three best players in the league, and to pair him in prime with Curry would give the Warriors one of the greatest duos in NBA history. And Klay Thompson and Draymond Green do not need the ball in their hands for long stretches in order to be effective—Klay is one of the best catch and shoot players of all time, and Draymond makes his mark offensively with quick decisions and pinpoint passes. I think this Big Four would be a clear upgrade.
And Durant, one of the league’s best scorers, could take long stretches playing with the reserves, doing a supercharged, elite version of what Andre Iguodala does now—creating shots and points while Curry is on the bench.
With the starters, Looney could grow into the role of Harrison Barnes. He’s plenty big and athletic enough to guard opposing fours, and he can hit the open threes and finish well. He won’t be overextended, taxed with creating his own shot.
I thought of Durant to the Warriors as a pipe dream. But with the emergence of Looney, coupled with Barnes’s impending overpayment by some team, I think now it’s a very feasible path to…who knows, maybe even 80 wins next season.