{"id":285681,"date":"2025-09-15T23:30:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-15T23:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/285681\/"},"modified":"2025-09-15T23:30:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-15T23:30:11","slug":"warrriors-turned-down-kuminga-deal-with-suns-for-veteran-oneale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/285681\/","title":{"rendered":"Warrriors turned down Kuminga deal with Suns for veteran O\u2019Neale"},"content":{"rendered":"

A recent report<\/a> provided some clarity on the Golden State Warriors\u2019 endless negotiations with restricted free agent Jonathan Kuminga, who is either a future All-Star held back by his wicked head coach or a player who wildly overrates his own talent, while the Warriors are either insulting low-balling their young forward or prudently protecting their trade options. One thing they aren\u2019t doing is trading Kuminga to the Phoenix Suns.<\/p>\n

During Kuminga\u2019s long restricted free agent saga, the Warriors haven\u2019t received a sign-and-trade offer that they like \u2014 not that it seems like many arrived. Shams Charania and Anthony Slater cite two that the Warriors turned down: One that would send Kuminga to the Sacramento Kings in exchange for Malik Monk and a highly-protected first-round pick, and another that would route Kuminga to the Phoenix Suns for veteran forward Royce O\u2019Neale and second-round picks, since the Suns are so low on draft capital that they\u2019ve had to trade picks swaps of pick swaps<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But assuming they\u2019d been interested in O\u2019Neale, what would he have provided? His salary for 2025-26 is $10.125M, which should have allowed the Warriors to avoid the base-year compensation issues that complicated any deals involving restricted free agents.<\/p>\n

Base-year rules limit Jonathan Kuminga\u2019s options<\/p>\n

The simplified explanation for this is that Kuminga\u2019s salary in a sign-and-trade deal counts at only 50% of its value as outgoing salary for the Warriors, but counts as the full amount for the receiving team. Kuminga\u2019s offer with the Suns was worth four years and somewhere in the $80-88M range. Marc J. Spears reported in July<\/a> that the Suns trade would send center Nick Richards to the Warriors, along with four second-rounders.<\/p>\n

Richards is making $5M next season in the last year of his deal and will be backing up center Mark Williams, which he also did as a Charlotte Hornet. O\u2019Neale has three years left on his contract for $32.6M, not all that attractive of a deal since he\u2019ll be 35 years old at the end of it. It makes all kinds of sense that Kuminga would want to go to Phoenix and start at their vacant power forward position, but the Suns just don\u2019t have much they can trade.<\/p>\n

How would O\u2019Neale fit as a Warrior? O\u2019Neale\u2019s role is as a three-and-D forward who can stretch the floor and play both forward positions. He made 40.6% of his three-pointers last season on a healthy volume of 5.9 attempts per game. For his career, O\u2019Neale has made 1.5 threes per game at a 38.5% clip \u2014 pretty solid! O\u2019Neale was one of the best defenders on the Suns last year but that\u2019s not a huge accomplishment on the NBA\u2019s fourth-worst defense in terms of defensive rating.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, three-point shooting is most of what O\u2019Neale does on the offensive end. He took 77.3% of his shots from three-point range and 96% of those were assisted. He did shoot an impressive 52.9% on corner threes last season. O\u2019 Neale doesn\u2019t particularly move and cut on offense, with only 20% of his shots coming within 10 feet of the basket and racking up a mere three dunks in 75 games.<\/p>\n

If the Warriors were getting the Royce O\u2019Neale from five years ago, when his defense was elite, this may have been an attractive offer. But the Suns essentially wanted to salary-dump O\u2019Neale and get Jonathan Kuminga as the reward, with the only sweetener being a pu-pu platter of second-round picks.<\/p>\n

The Warriors can and should do better in a Kuminga trade, especially if they stop insisting on a team option and just sign him. As far as this rumored deal is concerned, it\u2019s interesting \u2014 but not surprising that the Warriors shut it down.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A recent report provided some clarity on the Golden State Warriors\u2019 endless negotiations with restricted free agent Jonathan…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":285682,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3791],"tags":[7,6,37651,2065,472,4045,604,38296],"class_list":{"0":"post-285681","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-phoenix-suns","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-nba","10":"tag-nba-news-and-rumors","11":"tag-phoenix","12":"tag-phoenix-suns","13":"tag-phoenixsuns","14":"tag-suns","15":"tag-warriors-free-agency"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115210920009584807","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=285681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285681\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/285682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}