JULY 11: The Warriors have officially re-signed Looney, the team confirmed today in a press release.
JULY 2: Looney’s new deal features a third-year player option, tweets Mark Medina of The Mercury News.
JULY 1: The Warriors will bring back free agent big man Kevon Looney, according to Shams Charania of The Athletic, who reports (via Twitter) that the two sides have agreed to a three-year, $15MM deal. As Charania details (via Twitter), the Warriors met with Looney over the weekend and reached an agreement with him and agent Todd Ramasar on Monday.
Looney, the 30th overall pick in the 2015 draft, hasn’t put up huge numbers during his four seasons in Golden State, but he has becoming an increasingly important part of the team’s rotation in recent years.
In 2018/19, the 23-year-old averaged 6.3 PPG and 5.2 RPG on 62.5% shooting in 80 games (18.5 MPG) for the Warriors. While he generally came off the bench, he emerged as the team’s most reliable center in the postseason due to his ability to switch on defense and hold his own against perimeter players.
The Warriors held Looney’s Bird rights this offseason, which gave them the ability to offer him any salary up to the max. However, by acquiring D’Angelo Russell in a sign-and-trade deal with the Nets, Golden State will face a hard cap of $138.9MM, the amount of the tax apron.
It wasn’t clear whether the Warriors would find a way to squeeze Looney – arguably their most important free agent beyond Klay Thompson and Kevin Durant – below that hard cap, since he appeared likely to receive plenty of interest on the open market. However, the Dubs got a good price to bring him back, and will presumably fill most of the rest of their roster with minimum-salary contracts to sneak below that $138.9MM threshold.
Bobby Marks of ESPN.com goes into detail on just how close the Warriors project to come to that hard cap.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
I don’t know how the hard cap actually works. I know the Warriors still have the mid-level exemption they used on Boogie last year. Does the exemption count against the hard cap. If so, what is it exempt from?
They can use it when they’re over the soft cap, but not to go over the hard cap. I don’t think they’ll be able to use it, but we’ll see.
Hard cap is exactly as it sounds. There is no mid level open to them. After filling out the roster with their draft picks and minimum salary guys, they will have about 430K left.
Right. The taxpayer MLE is technically still “available,” but there’s no path to using it unless they ditch more salary (and since that would mean parting with, say, Draymond, it’s almost certainly not happening).
They also have a 17mil trade exemption as well that can’t be used right now from the Iguodala deal. Depending on when all these deals become official, they should have a small number of days to use it in July 2020, since that exception is good for one year.
Yes, Jones is signed through this coming season but I would guess the plan is for Looney to be their starting center at this point.
This is huge.
Yes I’ve been waiting for this one all day. Got to have the big man that plays defense.
well done Bob! Looney, keep working hard, looking forward to watching your play progress in the right direction. So far so good.
Looney’s still only 23 and gets better every year, this is a lowkey huge move for gsw
I agree I get he does have any range with his shot but defends and rebounds which is about all golden state needs out of a big
That is a bargain contract. Either Looney is giving the Warriors a big discount or other teams are sleeping on what a solid, winning player he is.
Discount for sure.
Warriors sign a free agent player. It’s a Looney !!
I assume Damion Jones is back. While I like Looney better, Jones did start at the beginning of the season, until injured.
He’s proven his worth year after year along with adding new wrinkles into his game. He’s the definition of a guy without all the physical gifts that works on his game and does the small things.
Looney could bulk up a little and protect that body a little better. That inside game proves so unforgiving; I don’t see how players take the beating sometimes -as witnessed in the Finals. Looney was a standout payer the way he clawed back on the court. What heart and determination!
Looney is about as muscular as one can get without getting slow!
Yeah I hear you. But some added bulk will only help him out controlling the low. Look at how a significantly less Lowry body mass did to Looney’s shoulder; plowed him over, spun him around like a top, breaking his collarbone. That wont happen again after summer bulking about sessions-eh Looney? Yer the man, getting better by the game. Keep up the good work, Loon.
Leonard injured Looney.
And not without effort or probably even intention.
I expect it’s hard to build muscle in that area at the top rib. I’m not sure there is even muscle tissue there… one can feel one’s windpipe.