NBA Free Agency: Kevon Looney could return as a hometown hero for the Milwaukee Bucks

Weaknesses

Expanding on the topic of shooting, Looney has failed to find his range since landing in the NBA.

As a good three-point shooter in college, the spacing provided by the likes of Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Kevin Durant seems like the ideal scenario to set up successful shooting in the NBA, but that hasn’t been the case for Looney so far.

In spite of shooting a very impressive 56 percent from the field for his NBA career to date, Looney has made just 25 percent of his attempts from beyond the arc. Perhaps even more noteworthy than that, Looney has attempted just 16 triples across those three seasons, after knocking down 22-of-53 in just 36 games in college.

The big question is whether something has changed in Looney’s ability or willingness to let fly from deep, or whether that was simply a byproduct of Golden State’s strategy.

The latter certainly seems like the most logical outcome, as for as much as the Warriors are famed for their three-point shooting, they’ve always opted for slightly more traditional non-shooting big men outside of moving Draymond Green to the 5 in small-ball lineups.

Essentially while there’s little concrete cause for optimism about Looney’s shooting from his NBA career to date, his situation and his previous track record certainly offer more than a glimmer of hope.

While offensive limitations are a somewhat obvious issue that comes with signing Looney, center isn’t exactly the position where teams generally ask for too much on that end anyway.

A bigger concern would be the injury issues that saw Looney surprisingly slip all the way to 30 on draft night. Looney entered the league with a hip injury, and ultimately went on to miss all but five games of his rookie season as he had two surgeries, one on each side.

Those two surgeries essentially robbed Looney of valuable development time and his first two NBA offseasons, but by all accounts they were a success. Looney played 119 regular season games between his second and third seasons, with many of the games missed attributable to DNP-CDs rather than anything more nefarious.

Still, as time wears on, the possibility of Looney again injuring his hip will remain, and could certainly cause teams to be cautious when it comes to presenting him with offers this summer.