Exclusive | After weird season in New Orleans, Kevon Looney eager to be Lakers veteran leader

After the 2025-26 season ended, Kevon Looney didn’t realize the next step in his NBA journey would bring him back to a familiar place. But after what he described as a “weird” year in New Orleans, Looney is back in Los Angeles, which provided a full-circle moment for him when the Lakers opened their regular season against the Warriors on Wednesday night at Crypto.com Arena. “I know, being on the other side of the Bay-LA rivalry always is, how big those games are, how entertaining those games are,” Looney told The California Post.“So I’m excited to be on the other side and part of that journey.”Looney’s excitement extended beyond Wednesday, and the three other times during the regular season that he’ll be able to play against the franchise he spent the first decade of his NBA career with.The 12-year veteran center is back in Southern California after spending his lone collegiate season at UCLA before the Warriors selected him with the No.

30 pick in the 2015 NBA draft. He already spent a lot of his time during offseasons around Los Angeles before joining the Lakers. His wife, fitness model and entrepreneur Mariah Simone Winston, with the two getting married over the summer, is from Los Angeles.Throughout the years, her and her family would ask the 6-foot-9 center about the possibility of playing for the Lakers.“I’m like, ‘ahh who knows?’,” Looney would respond.But when the Lakers were among the handful of playoff-hopeful teams that expressed interest in the veteran big man during his free agency, he immediately got excited. “When looking at the options and the landscape or opportunities, it was like, ‘all right, this is a team, a place I like to be at and it’s a chance to win and play for something’,” Looney told the Post.“It hit every mark that I wanted to be at.

I’m here all summer training and everything.It was an easy transition for me.

I got a lot of ties here.”“It wasn’t on my radar at the end of the sea...