Kevon Looney is rebounding at an unprecedented level
Kevon Looney has always been a solid rebounder. This postseason he's turned it up to historic levels.
Looney is the first player with four games of 20 or more rebounds in a single postseason since Dwight Howard in 2009. But Howard played 23 games in those playoffs - he got his 4th 20+ rebound game in his 22nd playoff game. Looney has done it in just eight playoff games, and has done it in four of the last six games.
That hasn't been done in 50 years, since Wilt Chamberlain had seven straight 20+ rebound games in the 1973 playoffs. And if you know the NBA, you know that any time something hasn't been done since Wilt the Stilt, it's pretty impressive.
Before last season's playoffs, Looney was known as a good defender, and a pretty good offensive rebounder - he was 12th in the league in total offensive rebounds for the 2021-22 season. But in the Warriors' clinching game over the Memphis Grizzlies in last season's playoffs, Looney dominated with 22 rebounds, 11 of them on the offensive glass.
Looney grabbed more offensive boards than the entire Grizzlies team. Then, in the conference finals, he had 18 rebounds against the Mavericks. Seven of them were on the offensive glass, which was again more than the entire Dallas team. Last round, he helped the Warriors come back from a 2-0 deficit with games of 20, 22 and 21 rebounds - the last coming in Game 7.
His emergence on the glass has allowed the Warriors to survive while playing small, often with three guards and 6'7" Andrew Wiggins playing power forward. Looney managed to match Anthony Davis' 23 rebounds in Tuesday's Game 1, grabbing seven more offensive boards.
Can he keep it up? Given the success of their small lineups, and the relative struggles of the Looney-Draymond Green lineups, Looney may need to take on even more of the rebounding burden himself.
But he still has a long way to match the Warriors' greatest rebounder. That's Nate Thurmond, who topped 20 boards in 13 straight playoff games from 1967-69, including an NBA Finals where he averaged 26.7 rebounds per game. Unfortunately, his opponent had 28.5 rebounds per game: Wilt Chamberlain, of course.
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