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First, the Warriors wanted Jonathan Kuminga to be great. Then they just wanted him to fit into how they play. Then they wanted him to be valuable on the trade market.
And finally, four-plus years after he was drafted with the seventh overall pick in the 2021 draft, they just wanted him to be gone.
That is the opposite of a winning progression for any team’s heralded lottery pick — from golden hope to stalled-out young player to weird contract agonies to being sent off summarily on Wednesday night along with Buddy Hield to the Atlanta Hawks for talented but oft-injured center Kristaps Porzingis, who is only signed through this season.
Maybe Porzingis can team with Draymond Green in the front court and give the Warriors what they hoped they’d get from Al Horford this season. But maybe Porzingis won’t be healthy for more than a handful of games. Maybe he’ll leave in the summer.
And these moves are a tacit acknowledgement that there’s no way the Warriors will be making a long run through this postseason or play a single minute of very meaningful basketball for a while before regrouping for one last run next season.
To put it bluntly, it’s not a great return for Kuminga, someone the Warriors not long ago hoped would be a key part of their future beyond Stephen Curry’s best years and just this week would be a pivotal piece to land Giannis Antetokounmpo.
Will Kuminga flourish on a young Hawks team now that he’s finally away from Steve Kerr’s system, Curry’s gravity, Jimmy Butler’s style, and everything else that might’ve slowed him down with the Warriors?
Perhaps. And that would certainly indicate that the Warriors made some miscalculations. I imagine Joe Lacob would have some thoughts about that if Kuminga suddenly plays free and loose and averages 20 points from here on.
It doesn’t speak much to the Warriors’ future, though — Kuminga’s time here was done. And if he really was an immensely valuable player that the Warriors obviously mishandled, wouldn’t other teams have lined up to acquire him last summer and now?
But, as a Warriors source indicated on Tuesday, there was no traction in the Giannis talks — even when the Warriors pretty publicly included Draymond in their offer. Which nudged the Warriors to consider other deals before Thursday’s trade deadline.
It all was frustrating. For Kuminga. And definitely for the Warriors, as we all heard when Mike Dunleavy was asked a few weeks ago about a recent report that Kuminga had demanded to be traded.
“When you make a demand, there needs to be a demand on the market,” Dunleavy said back then. “So we’ll see where that unfolds.”
The Warriors got their answer and made their decision about 15 hours before the deadline. Kuminga couldn’t get them Giannis (we can presume that the Warriors are out of the Giannis market almost completely now, even if it stretches into next summer), couldn’t get them Trey Murphy III, and couldn’t get them an extra first-round pick.
It was a mini-punt: They also agreed to move Trayce Jackson-Davis to Toronto for a second-round pick, which means they sent away three players and got back one, opening up two roster spots.
One will go to Pat Spencer, who was running out of two-way eligibility. And we’ll see if the Warriors fill the other by noon.
This has to be a fairly bitter pill for Lacob, who was Kuminga’s champion all the way through to Kuminga’s last, brief shining moment with the Warriors, when he stepped in after Butler’s ACL tear and scored 20 points in 21 minutes with Lacob pumping his fist courtside along with every basket.
But the next game, Kuminga hurt his knee and never suited up for the Warriors again. And from the moment he limped off the court in Dallas on Jan. 22, it seemed pretty clear that there was no reason for Kuminga to rush back or for the Warriors to hope for a quick return.
Because he was, by then, already basically an ex-Warrior. Everybody just had to wait until the Warriors made it official. And to find out what they could get back.
Lottery picks don’t always work out. James Wiseman, taken No. 2 in the draft the year before Kuminga was selected, flamed out with the Warriors in just two-plus seasons, and got the Warriors an even lighter trade return.
The Kuminga experience, though, was longer, weirder, and more fraught with expectations clashing against Kerr’s judgment about Kuminga’s one-on-one style.
What made it more complicated: Kuminga always was popular in the locker room, never exchanged angry words with Kerr, and clearly is immensely talented — by far the most athletic player on the Warriors’ roster for his entire career here.
If it had worked, the Warriors would’ve really had something. But especially after Jimmy Butler was acquired a year ago and the Warriors took off, there was no place for Kuminga, who didn’t quite fit in with Curry on the court and absolutely didn’t meld with Butler.
Nobody made the most out of the situation. And the Warriors had to fold their hand this time.
This whole thing should’ve ended last summer, when Kuminga and the Warriors were stalemated over his restricted free agency for months and his agent made several very loud public appearances, a few of them directly taking on Kerr.
But — here’s a theme — there wasn’t much outside interest in Kuminga. So the Warriors either had to practically give him away or get him signed to a short-term deal and try to trade him later. He signed a two-year, $46.8-million deal that’s only guaranteed for this season’s $22.5 million.
It wasn’t going to work this season, though, for the same reasons it didn’t work for him when he was a rarely played rookie on the 2022 championship team, when he was benched at the end of last season, and when he was pulled from the rotation this season after suffering an injury in San Antonio.
It didn’t work because it wasn’t a good pick —Franz Wagner went eighth in that draft, Alperen Sengun 16th, and Murphy 17th. (The Warriors took Moses Moody 14th in that draft.)
It didn’t work because Kerr didn’t trust Kuminga in his system and Kuminga, at the end, didn’t trust that Kerr ever believed in him.
It didn’t work because both men were a little too stubborn, and also a little too right about each other.
It didn’t work because after almost five seasons, the Warriors are better off without Kuminga, Kuminga is better off without them, and neither side got the best out of anything in this whole failure.