Kevon Looney Reportedly Agrees to $16M Pelicans Contract, Won 3 Titles with Warriors

Kevon Looney's tenure with the Golden State Warriors is reportedly over after 10 seasons.

ESPN's Shams Charania reported Monday he agreed to a two-year, $16 million deal with the New Orleans Pelicans.

Looney is coming off a 2024-25 season in which he was again relegated to the bench role he occupied during the height of Golden State's dynasty. He averaged 4.5 points, 6.1 rebounds and 0.5 blocks in 15.0 minutes per game. Head coach Steve Kerr wasn't afraid to lean on 2023 second-round pick Trayce Jackson-Davis in the frontcourt, which came at the cost of Looney's usage.

As last offseason was getting underway, his future was the subject of some doubt. His $8 million salary was only partially guaranteed, so Golden State could've saved $5 million by waiving him before the guarantee date.

Looney remained on the roster past the deadline for his guarantee, with general manager Mike Dunleavy Jr. telling reporters the Warriors "value him so much as a player, as a teammate, as a core piece of this organization."

Dunleavy also talked about the decision in cold basketball terms, however, explaining it didn't make sense to release the big man and thus get nothing in return from his departure. He added that "all things are always on the table and available."

The current collective bargaining agreement has forced the Warriors to be more conscious of its payroll than it had been in the past. Even if team governor Joe Lacob was content to keep paying massive luxury tax bills like he once was, the penalties for staying in the second apron are too constricting from a team-building aspect.

"Our Plan 1, or 1A, is actually we'd like to be out of the tax, and we think that we have a way to do that," Lacob said to The Athletic's Tim Kawakami in February 2024. "That kind of is the plan, not just under the second apron. I'll tell you why that's important, because the truth is that we need to be out of the tax two years out of the next four, below the tax line, in order to get this repeater thing off our books. We don't want to be a repeater. It's just so prohibitive, not to say we wouldn't do it if we had to, but you've gotta look at what the downside is to doing that."

If the Warriors were willing to be pragmatic with a franchise legend such as Klay Thompson, then it stood to reason they'd be just as unsentimental with Looney.

His rebounding and leadership will be missed in the Bay Area, and now the Pelicans will be benefiting from his presence both on the court and in the locker room. Looney will provide solid depth in the frontcourt for a team looking to make a playoff run in the loaded Western Conference.