{"id":584335,"date":"2026-02-05T16:00:15","date_gmt":"2026-02-05T16:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/584335\/"},"modified":"2026-02-05T16:00:15","modified_gmt":"2026-02-05T16:00:15","slug":"jonathan-kuminga-and-steve-kerr-were-both-too-stubborn-and-both-too-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/584335\/","title":{"rendered":"Jonathan Kuminga and Steve Kerr were both too stubborn and both too right"},"content":{"rendered":"

Want more ways to catch up on the latest in Bay Area sports? Sign up for the <\/a>Section 415 email newsletter here<\/a> and subscribe to the \u201cSection 415″ podcast <\/a>wherever you listen<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

That is the opposite of a winning progression for any team\u2019s heralded lottery pick \u2014 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.<\/p>\n

Maybe Porzingis can team with Draymond Green in the front court and give the Warriors what they hoped they\u2019d get from Al Horford this season. But maybe Porzingis won\u2019t be healthy for more than a handful of games. Maybe he\u2019ll leave in the summer. <\/p>\n

And these moves are a tacit acknowledgement that there\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

To put it bluntly, it\u2019s not a great return for Kuminga, someone the Warriors not long ago hoped would be a key part of their future beyond Stephen Curry\u2019s best years and just this week would be a pivotal piece to land Giannis Antetokounmpo. <\/p>\n

Will Kuminga flourish on a young Hawks team now that he\u2019s finally away from Steve Kerr\u2019s system, Curry\u2019s gravity, Jimmy Butler\u2019s style, and everything else that might\u2019ve slowed him down with the Warriors? <\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t speak much to the Warriors\u2019 future, though \u2014 Kuminga\u2019s time here was done. And if he really was an immensely valuable player that the Warriors obviously mishandled, wouldn\u2019t other teams have lined up to acquire him last summer and now?<\/p>\n

But, as a Warriors source indicated on Tuesday, there was no traction in the Giannis talks \u2014 even when the Warriors pretty publicly included Draymond in their offer. Which nudged the Warriors to consider other deals before Thursday\u2019s trade deadline.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you make a demand, there needs to be a demand on the market,\u201d Dunleavy said back then. \u201cSo we\u2019ll see where that unfolds.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Warriors got their answer and made their decision about 15 hours before the deadline. Kuminga couldn\u2019t 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\u2019t get them Trey Murphy III, and couldn\u2019t get them an extra first-round pick.<\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

One will go to Pat Spencer, who was running out of two-way eligibility. And we\u2019ll see if the Warriors fill the other by noon.<\/p>\n

This has to be a fairly bitter pill for Lacob, who was Kuminga\u2019s champion all the way through to Kuminga\u2019s last, brief shining moment with the Warriors, when he stepped in after Butler\u2019s ACL tear and scored 20 points in 21 minutes with Lacob pumping his fist courtside along with every basket.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Lottery picks don\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

The Kuminga experience, though, was longer, weirder, and more fraught with expectations clashing against Kerr\u2019s judgment about Kuminga\u2019s one-on-one style.<\/p>\n

What made it more complicated: Kuminga always was popular in the locker room, never exchanged angry words with Kerr, and clearly is immensely talented \u2014 by far the most athletic player on the Warriors\u2019 roster for his entire career here.<\/p>\n

If it had worked, the Warriors would\u2019ve 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\u2019t quite fit in with Curry on the court and absolutely didn\u2019t meld with Butler.<\/p>\n

Nobody made the most out of the situation. And the Warriors had to fold their hand this time.<\/p>\n

This whole thing should\u2019ve 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.<\/p>\n

But \u2014 here\u2019s a theme \u2014 there wasn\u2019t 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\u2019s only guaranteed for this season\u2019s $22.5 million.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t going to work this season, though, for the same reasons it didn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t work because it wasn\u2019t a good pick \u2014Franz Wagner went eighth in that draft, Alperen Sengun 16th, and Murphy 17th. (The Warriors took Moses Moody 14th in that draft.)<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t work because Kerr didn\u2019t trust Kuminga in his system and Kuminga, at the end, didn\u2019t trust that Kerr ever believed in him. <\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t work because both men were a little too stubborn, and also a little too right about each other.<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Want more ways to catch up on the latest in Bay Area sports? Sign up for the Section…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":584336,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3786],"tags":[7,479,164,4025,4024,867,6,66,863,255],"class_list":{"0":"post-584335","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golden-state-warriors","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-golden-state","10":"tag-golden-state-warriors","11":"tag-goldenstate","12":"tag-goldenstatewarriors","13":"tag-jonathan-kuminga","14":"tag-nba","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-steve-kerr","17":"tag-warriors"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116018860864719522","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584335","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=584335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584335\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/584336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=584335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=584335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=584335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}