Kevon Looney departed his game near the end of the third quarter having earned the Warriors a 17-point lead. Without his 19 points, they would’ve ALREADY been losing by that point. I guess it would’ve been fine if he didn’t score at all, because in the end, the Warriors lost with him only playing the last minute or so of the fourth, one of the biggest chokejobs in NBA history. Not even going to qualify that with “playoffs”. One of the biggest chokejobs, EVER, in NBA history, playoffs, regular season, preseason, scrimmage games, doesn’t matter. The Warriors had a 31-point lead at one point, and they let it slip away. I’m not going to pretend that I’m not incredibly happy right now.
But we shouldn’t let this distract us from the fact that Looney had the best scoring game of his career. His highest regular-season scoring game of his career is only 15 points; this performance means he is someone who can accurately be called a “playoff performer”. He steps up on the big stage. When the lights get bright, he gets brighter. The fact that the Warriors lost should not be held against him. He’s the one who saw the moldering corpse of DeMarcus Cousins in the locker room, shed a single tear, and whispered “I got you bro”, while Kevin Durant spent the entire game thinking about how cool it would be to play with Dennis Smith Jr. and Lance Thomas in New York.
If Cousins actually is injured badly (it certainly looked like he was), badly enough to miss a few games/the whole series/the entire playoffs, it would be cool if Looney could replicate something like this on a regular basis. But I would say it’s not strictly necessary. The Warriors still have plenty of scoring punch available to them as long as Durant doesn’t get all weird and sulky and defer-y again.