Kevon Looney was the baby the doctors told his mum not to have.

Victoria Looney was already nurturing her first son, Kevin, when she and her husband, Kevin Sr., were expecting their first daughter, Summer. The pregnancy was riddled with complications, so difficult it nearly killed them both.

Thankfully, the story ended happily. But once pregnant with Kevon, that painful history could have prevented all that has occurred since his birth. An unbreakable bond with a brother. Two NBA championships with a generational team. A family connection that is both genuine and endearing.

Before all of that, the message was clear.

“They told me not to have him”, Victoria says.

Of course, it would never be that simple. “I told them, ‘let me go and pray and I will come back with an answer’. When I went back and they asked me what I was going to do, I said I am going to have him.

The doctors told Victoria they hoped her God was right.

“Today he is an NBA player”, she says with a smile.

Victoria and Doug had installed tremendous belief in their final child - “our baby”, as his mum calls him - before day one.

“Our family are really close”, Looney himself says.

Born and raised in Milwaukee, when Looney made the decision to play for Tom Diener at Alexander Hamilton High School on the south side of the city, a family meeting was called and the coach was invited into their home. The night before Looney committed to UCLA - albeit unbeknownst to his family - the table was shared again. On draft night in 2015, the Looneys filled the green room in New York City and on signing with the Golden State Warriors with the final pick of the first round, his parents moved out to Oakland, stationing themselves in Walnut Creek.

They transport him with care, follow him passionately, direct him wisely. It is all they have ever known, for all of their children.

“His parents are outstanding people, very humble, quiet, unassuming”, Diener says when recalling his time with the family. “You will not find anybody that does not like Kevon Looney, or his mum and dad.”

Diener would know, for he cried over the phone when informing Doug that he was leaving for another coaching job after three years with Kevon.

A 4.0 student who barely speaks and always listens, Looney had that rare understanding for a youngster that earning good grades garnered high reward and perfectly complemented a well-thought-out practice regime. He was competitive enough to want to beat his peers in class as well as on the court, his stationary out first and books packed away last before returning to the gym.

All of it boiled down to family values, which promoted effort and integrity.

“We used to have family meetings if there was something we were concerned about”, Victoria says. “What we didn’t understand we talked about, and we communicated until we figured it out.

“The boys had to be in bed by 10. My husband would get up at five o’clock in the morning to take Kevon to high school practice, then come back home and get dressed for work. I would then pick him up”, Victoria says, her 24-hour doting schedule including a reminder to Looney to bend his head when he went down to the basement for laundry.

No matter the time or distance of travel, basketball was the destination.

“Everywhere he went, he carried a basketball”, she says.

Looney fell in love with the game because of his brother Kevin, who is six years his senior.

“Kevin would always take Kevon to go and play with him, and Kevon would follow him pretty much everywhere”, father Doug says.

Kevon had a hoop in his backyard as early as he can remember, and would always be ready to take visitors on one-on-one. He spent most of his hours at the local court, also his first school at Stewart Elementary. The brothers would head to the park, lacing either Jordans or regular sneakers depending on how good their grades were at the time, their parents rewarding them accordingly.

Scrimmaging was a daily ritual, a multi-hour smorgasbord of observation and initiation for Looney.

“Kevin was a shooter”, Looney says of his brothers’ game. “He had no conscience. He is older than me so I could not get any shots. He made me play defence.”

It was tough love, but loyal nonetheless. “Kevin would come home and say, ‘Kevon can play’ or, ‘Kevon gonna be a baller’”, Victoria says.

His parents used to mark his height on the wall of their duplex, drawing a line every month to track his growth. “When he got taller than his dad, it was a happy day for Kevon”, Victoria says of the moment he surpassed six foot six and his idol, Kobe Bryant.

Having moved out of the house years ago, she wonders if the marks are still there.

Kevon would slowly gain the height advantage, but throughout childhood it was Kevin who held the park as his own. He would make sure to pick Kevon, with the catch being that his little brother had to stand in the corner and go after all the rebounds.

“Most of the time I was the smallest and holding the guard-type players, and that really helped me out as I moved on because I was always able to defend”, Looney says, who in a charming way uses the term ‘holding’ for all descriptions of defence. “That was my way to stay on the court and if my guy kept scoring, my brother was going to tell me about it.”

At a young age, Looney was learning how to slow up the hierarchy. He would have to guard bigger players, smaller players, faster players, a familiar reality in last year’s playoffs when he often had to switch onto a body like Anthony Davis in the second round or James Harden in the Western Conference Finals, expressing himself within his new and defined role on the Warriors.

It seemed like he was always planning for that moment ahead, his diligence and work ethic offsetting a quiet personality.

“Kevon was real shy”, Doug says. “Not only amongst his peers and adults but even his game at first. But he did become different on the court in time”.

That shyness didn’t exactly hold itself back if Looney came home from the park in defeat, something he has rarely experienced after three years in the NBA. “He would get so upset that tears would come to his eyes”, Victoria says. “We would be like, ‘stop crying, man up’. He would say, ‘mum, I do not like losing’”.

So much so that the last time Looney triumphed against his dad at chess, he told him he was tired of beating him and gave it up. Always end on a win.

There was no trophy for that victory, but the Looneys’ walls were once plastered in silverware, Kevon the owner of so many that his bedroom was not big enough and the collection spread into the living room. Today they are covered in family photos, and for Victoria she has one particular favourite. It shows Kevon in fifth grade, a basketball under his arm and a smile that shows one tooth missing.

“That is the beginning of who he was”, she says.

And what he became he always knew. When Looney was 10 he had a visit to the family dentist in Milwaukee for a teeth clean. Dr Buress asked him what he wanted to be, “and Kevon told him, ‘I want to be an NBA player’”, Victoria says.

With that now a reality, the dentist has Looney’s jersey hanging in his office and watches Warriors games regularly, in awe of his patient’s achievements.

But what has he witnessed so far?

Having played just 58 total games in his first two NBA seasons because of overlapping hip injuries, Looney is coming off a 66-game, 13.8 minute campaign for a championship team. He made defence his calling card before last season in order to establish a role on a Warriors team overflowing with talent on both sides of the floor, similar to his park days but a sea change given only a handful of years ago he was the talent.

High school Looney played and trained as a guard, defended the guards, was a guard. He was a scorer, too, and while now largely pegged as a defensive specialist in the NBA, Looney is hoping to build on his defensive versatility by returning to his offensive ways.

As a youngster, Looney studied the game religiously, keeping his elementary teachers happy by reading NBA books he rented from the library until he discovered YouTube, he and his brother obsessed with Kobe Bryant.

“My favourite move was his fadeaway from the post”, Looney says. “Kevin was imitating Kobe and I was imitating him.”

His mother adds: “People around school and AAU used to say he was like Kevin Durant, and when I told that to Kevon he would be like, ‘oh no, I’m like Kobe’. Now that he is actually playing with Durant, I am like, ‘how do you feel now?’”

He may have the answer.

Coming off hip surgery before Durant’s debut season with the Warriors, Looney’s first action was a four-on-four scrimmage with his teammates just before training camp. They were playing to 11 points with no coaches or officials around, just the Bay Area sunshine in their faces and a resting Draymond Green sitting on the sideline ready to call people out.

“It was really my first time playing full court off the injury, and guess what? I had to hold KD”, Looney says.

“It was the hardest thing I ever had to do in my life.”

Durant did not miss a shot and, as if he would not anyway, Green got involved.

“Draymond was on the sideline talking smack, talking mess like, ‘Man Looney, you getting ran out, you cannot hold him at all, where you at?’ I was like, ‘Alright, you come and hold him’. That was all I could say but I really took that to heart. I have got to be able to hold him, I cannot just be out here … I do not care how good he is, I have got to be able to hold him a little bit.

“That really stuck with me and really made me want to focus on defence too.”

Looney, who now picks up Durant a lot on defence in formal practices, frustratingly faced injuries and a role that remained similar to his rookie season following Durant’s addition. He observed from the sidelines how James Michael McAdoo would be getting into the game ahead of him, playing spot minutes but fulfilling a specific role for head coach Steve Kerr.

And so after a difficult season personally - one that ultimately ended with his first championship parade - Looney turned to a near Paleo diet, daily scrimmages at UCLA in which he played full court two-on-two, and a refusal to eat his beloved Doritos in order to condition himself as a defensive specialist. He weighed himself every day, took very personally comments from coaches who told him they watched him cover ground so well in college and in order to be a great defender in the NBA he had to get into shape.

“Focus is the word I would use to describe him”, Doug says. “He knows how to dial in and focus on what he has to do.”