Exactly three months since the opening of NBA free agency, Jonathan Kuminga and the Warriors finally came to a resolution on his restricted free agency. Take a breath, Dub Nation, it’s over.
Kuminga is signing a two-year, $48.5 million contract, sources confirmed to NBC Sports Bay Area. ESPN’s Shams Charania was first to report the news.
Kuminga’s desired player option never came to fruition. The second year of his contract will have a team option. Kuminga turned down a three-year, $75 million contract with a team option on the third year to have more immediate control over his future.
The team option on the second year of Kuminga’s contract can be wiped away by the Warriors or another team, if an in-season trade happens, to make room for a completely new contract next offseason, sources also confirmed to NBC Sports Bay Area.
The first four seasons of Kuminga’s Warriors tenure have been a battle of what’s best for the team and player. The Warriors won a championship that surprised many in Kuminga’s rookie year, throwing a wrinkle into team owner Joe Lacob’s highly-debated two-timelines plan. There have been multiple instances over the years when the Warriors could have traded Kuminga for a player that was more aligned with where veteran stars Steph Curry and Draymond Green are in their careers, but Lacob wouldn’t sign off on any of those deals.
Nor would he and the front office on the sign-and-trade options the Warriors were presented over the offseason from the Sacramento Kings and Phoenix Suns. All this brought was more drama and finger pointing, while the two sides came to an agreement the same day Warriors training camp opened.
But now that Kuminga is back with the Warriors, there’s a real argument they need him more than ever. With certain conditions, of course.
The Warriors have shown they can win without Kuminga’s style of play compared to coach Steve Kerr’s philosophy, and also have clearly seen the potential and talent he has, or else they already would have let him go by now. There even was a point last season where Kuminga was handed the keys and Green agreed to come off the bench. That plan lasted one game, a 143-133 loss against the Dallas Mavericks, where Kuminga scored 20 points as a starter and Green scored 21 in a reserve role.
Bringing Jimmy Butler aboard at the trade deadline as Kuminga still was nursing a badly sprained ankle signaled a full shift in direction, especially with how successful of a fit Butler proved to be. Kuminga returned after being out for more than two months, was never fully healthy and had a hard time playing next to Butler – an older star who has the same positional role on the Warriors.
Kerr stuck with what was working and pushed Kuminga’s talents to the back of the bench, not using him at all in the regular-season finale, a loss to the Los Angeles Clippers that put the Warriors in the NBA Play-In Tournament. Kuminga was a DNP in the Warriors’ play-in tournament win, as well as three games of the Warriors’ first-round series against the Houston Rockets. The writing appeared to be black Sharpie written on the wall in all caps.
The Warriors still will be run by Kerr’s ways on the court, and led by Curry, Butler and Green. That’s a given. And all three players, in one way or another, need the best out of Kuminga.
Father Time’s shadow is bearing down on Curry (37 years old), Butler (36) and Green (35), even though Curry continues to clearly be a top-10 player in the league. With Buddy Hield (32) and the return of Gary Payton II (32), plus the presumed signing of Al Horford (39) and possibly Seth Curry (35) the Warriors could have seven players in their 30s who are an average age of 35 going into the regular season. And that number should be slightly higher knowing that Payton turns 33 on Dec. 1, as does Hield a few weeks later on Dec. 17.
The elder Curry has played at least 70 games in back-to-back seasons. Is it fair to assume he reaches that mark again? Butler hasn’t played 65 since the 2018-19 season, and Green, who played 68 last season, is bound to need rest for all his battles against much bigger players. The entirety of the season doesn’t have to be the focus for Kuminga and the Warriors, Jan. 15 does.
Kuminga, who turns 23 on Oct. 6, can’t be traded until Jan. 15, the same day the Warriors will play their 40th game of the season. In a loaded Western Conference, the Warriors can’t be swimming upstream in the standings by then. Kuminga clearly is their biggest trade asset, and the Warriors will need his stock to rise and value to go up by then if they do decide to move him by the Feb. 5 trade deadline.
The schedule to start the season also suggests a need for Kuminga. The Warriors have two sets of back-to-backs in their first five games, and five in their first 17. They play eight by the end of the calendar year, nine by the first day Kuminga could be traded and 10 at the trade deadline. Those are ample opportunities for an older team to lean more on a 23-year-old who at the very least can score 20 points.
Questions will continue to be asked about Kuminga’s desire to have the ball in his hands while combating the Warriors’ ball movement offense, as well as other flaws like rebounding, 3-point shooting and team defense for one of the top athletes in the game. He’ll be under the microscope if he holds onto the ball and misses Curry. He also played 37 games with Curry last season and had the third-best net rating among Warriors who spent at least 500 minutes next to him, putting together a 118.7 offensive rating and 109.3 defensive rating for a 9.4 net rating.
Kuminga averaged 19.6 points in 10 regular-season games Curry missed. The Warriors went 5-5 in those games. Overall, the Warriors were 28-19 with Kuminga last season, and 20-15 without him.
Those numbers obviously don’t tell the whole story, since so much changed after the Butler acquisition. The Warriors’ season completely turned once Butler was wearing their colors, going 23-7 in the regular season after the trade. How Kuminga can play with Butler, if at all, is the bigger question than Curry. Kuminga’s agent, Aaron Turner, believes the two can co-exist, and showed so in the final four games of the playoffs.
“He figured out how to play off Jimmy,” Turner said to NBC Sports Bay Area on the Dubs Talk podcast. “It was going to take JK, with no training camp, time to figure out how to play off Jimmy. Jimmy’s different than what was there before. When JK left, he was the guy who was getting to the paint and creating advantages for his teammates. … JK had to accept that. JK figured it out in the Minnesota series.”
Butler and Kuminga only played 15 games together for a total of 125 minutes in the regular season. After Curry went down to a hamstring injury in the second round of the playoffs, Butler and Kuminga became the Warriors’ main scoring options. Butler averaged 20.3 points on 45.8/33.3/76.7 shooting splits, 6.5 rebounds and 5.0 assists per game, while Kuminga put up 24.3 points per game on 55.4/38.9/72.0 shooting splits, 3.5 rebounds and 1.3 assists.
The Warriors lost all four games, and Butler and Kuminga were a minus-6.8 together in another very small sample size. Seeing how they can complement each other is one priority. Using Kuminga as a focal point in games Butler needs off might be even more important for preserving his health in the playoffs.
Nothing in Kuminga’s contract says Kerr has to give in and play him more minutes than he believes is best for the team. From a talent standpoint, getting the best out of Kuminga, for however long he remains on the roster, is only going to benefit all parties.
Ironically, if the Warriors want to make a real run at another championship, after all that’s gone on in a marriage where divorce papers have been collecting dust and waiting to be signed, this season – or at least the first few months of it – is when they’ll need the best version of Kuminga most.
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