{"id":662778,"date":"2026-03-17T12:05:22","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T12:05:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/662778\/"},"modified":"2026-03-17T12:05:22","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T12:05:22","slug":"warriors-two-timelines-bracket-1st-round-kuminga-vs-baldwin-jr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/662778\/","title":{"rendered":"Warriors\u2019 Two-Timelines Bracket, 1st Round: Kuminga vs. Baldwin Jr."},"content":{"rendered":"

The Two-Timelines Bracket<\/a> is rolling. The question isn\u2019t who performed best; it\u2019s who did you believe in the most?We\u2019re talking eight ex-Warriors drafted after Kevin Durant left.<\/p>\n

Jordan Poole ran through Alen Smailagic 85% to 15% in the first matchup<\/a>, and James Wiseman crushed Ryan Rollins 80% to 20% in the second<\/a>. Trayce Jackson-Davis just scored the first upset by upending Eric Paschall,<\/a> 67% to 33%.<\/p>\n

Now we\u2019re here in the final matchup of the first round. And this one is different. Jonathan Kuminga was a top-five talent on a team that couldn\u2019t figure out where to put him. Patrick Baldwin Jr. was a first-round pick who played 31 games in a Warriors uniform and never got a real shot. One relationship lasted five years and ended with a trade nobody wanted to process. The other lasted one season and ended up as a footnote in a trade. The bracket doesn\u2019t care about that. It only asks one question: which one did you believe in more?<\/p>\n

Remember folks, this isn\u2019t about who was better. It\u2019s about which kind of belief stays with you longer: the player you lived through, or the one you never got to fully see.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the fight. And it refuses to let you off easy.<\/p>\n

(3) Jonathan Kuminga \u2014 \u201cThe Almost\u201d <\/p>\n

That\u2019s how long Warriors fans ran this particular emotional marathon. #7 overall pick in the 2021 draft Jonathan Kuminga arrived in Golden State at 19 years old, the second-youngest player in NBA history to hoist the Larry O\u2019Brien Trophy. The hype was enormous. And it was warranted. There were SO MANY flashes of freakish athleticism, impressive scoring, and feisty defense. Year Three brought that perfect 11-for-11 game against Atlanta<\/a>, the kind of performance that rewired your expectations for a random game in January.<\/p>\n

Year Four forced the question of what Kuminga\u2019s ceiling in Golden State actually was:<\/p>\n

December: Back-to-back 34-point performances against the Clippers and Suns, including the go-ahead free throw with 29 seconds left to seal the Phoenix win. Over four games that month he averaged 27 points on 64.3% true shooting. Kevin O\u2019Connor posted \u201cWhat if the Kuminga Truthers were right?\u201d and it had 188,000 impressions. December felt like prophecy finally arriving.January: Ankle sprain on the 4th against Memphis. Missed 31 straight games. While he was out, the Warriors traded for Jimmy Butler and went 12-1 with the new core. By the time Kuminga returned, the rotation had moved on without him.The verdict: He averaged 26 minutes and 16.8 points before the break. That dwindled to 20.8 minutes and 12.2 after. The league doesn\u2019t announce your demotion. It just cuts your minutes.<\/p>\n

Then May 10, 2025 we witnessed Game 3 of the Western Conference Semifinals against the Timberwolves. Steph Curry out with injury. Minnesota\u2019s suffocating defense. The kind of playoff atmosphere that chews up young players. Kuminga walked into Chase Center and scored 30 points on 11-of-18 shooting against one of the best defenses in basketball. Steve Kerr called it one of the best games of his life.<\/p>\n

By the summer of 2025, I was writing his season review at Dub Nation HQ with a title that asked the central question of his entire Warriors tenure: What is the happy ending in this relationship?<\/a><\/p>\n

This season we learned after hella DNP\u2019s and confusion about Kuminga\u2019s role that the problem was structural and it never went away. Curry\u2019s offense demands surrender to the ethos of Strength In Numbers. Kuminga\u2019s game demanded ownership. Apparently, there was no version<\/a> of Golden State where both could be true.<\/p>\n

Then the Warriors traded him to Atlanta on February 5, 2026, for Kristaps Porzingis, four months after he had signed a two-year, $48.5 million extension with Golden State. He debuted for the Hawks on February 24th and scored 27 points on 9-of-12 shooting in 24 minutes off the bench. The first player in Hawks franchise history to score 25-plus in under 30 minutes in a debut. The Warriors spent five years trying to figure out what he was. He\u2019s answering that question somewhere else.<\/p>\n

Here is the thing about the emotional case for Jonathan Kuminga in this bracket: five years of hope isn\u2019t a closed chapter. The Kuminga feelings aren\u2019t past tense. They never fully arrived and they never fully ended. That\u2019s The Almost. That\u2019s the 3 seed in this bracket. And it\u2019s perhaps the most complicated relationship anyone in this bracket ever had with Dub Nation.<\/p>\n

(6) Patrick Baldwin Jr. \u2014 \u201cThe Kid Who Deserved Better\u201d <\/p>\n

On draft night 2022, GSOM\u2019s Marc Delucchi wrote that the 28th pick Patrick Baldwin Jr.<\/a> arrived as a former top high school recruit with the potential to be an excellent floor spacer, joining a championship roster alongside Jordan Poole, Jonathan Kuminga, Moses Moody, and James Wiseman. The vision was real. You could see the shape of it. A 6\u201910\u201d forward with a 7\u20192\u201d wingspan, and a shooting stroke that scouts loved. There was a path.<\/p>\n

But PBJ only saw 31 games in a Warriors uniform with zero starts. He averaged 7.3 minutes per game and 3.9 points. That\u2019s not a development failure; that\u2019s a door that never opened.<\/p>\n

Then the Poole-Chris Paul trade happened on draft day 2023 and Baldwin went to Washington as fine print. Nobody celebrated it or really processed it. He was just suddenly gone from a team that had never fully given him the chance the draft night hype suggested he\u2019d earned. Washington didn\u2019t give him much either as he ended up bouncing to the Clippers, then the Sixers, and finally the Kangz. We\u2019re talking ten-day contracts and the G League. The circuit of players the league keeps alive on the margins because they\u2019re young enough and skilled enough that somebody might eventually get it right.<\/p>\n

Look at this career stat line. Four years. Five organizations? 100 games total averaging 8.8 minutes per game lifetime. You cannot show what you are in 8.8 minutes a night. You cannot become what draft night suggested you might be in 8.8 minutes a night.<\/p>\n

And here\u2019s the thing that makes the Baldwin emotional case for this bracket real: he\u2019s been showing, consistently, in the environments where he actually plays, that there\u2019s something there. He\u2019s been putting up 21 points and 8 rebounds a night in the G League this season in 35 minutes a game. That\u2019s not a fringe player. That\u2019s a player who never got the minutes.<\/p>\n

The emotional case for Baldwin in this bracket isn\u2019t complicated. You rooted for him because you liked him and because the door never opened wide enough for him to walk through. The potential was visible on draft night, the tools were real when he played, and the situation kept being exactly wrong in a way that felt like it had nothing to do with him. You checked the rotation for his name longer than the evidence warranted. You kept the faith because walking away from a player with a 7\u20192\u201d wingspan and a pretty stroke at 23 years old feels like giving up too early.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s still out there. The story isn\u2019t over. And that\u2019s exactly why the 6 seed belongs to him.<\/p>\n

This is where the bracket gets genuinely hard.<\/p>\n

Kuminga\u2019s ceiling was higher and the belief was deeper. Five years of emotional investment and a ceiling you watched flash in real time before a trade that still hasn\u2019t fully landed. The feelings are complicated and unresolved.<\/p>\n

Baldwin\u2019s case is smaller in scale and cleaner in grief. You never got to see enough of him to know what he actually was. The Warriors didn\u2019t give him a real shot, and now he\u2019s out there putting up buckets in the G League.<\/p>\n

One player gave you five years and left you with the residue of a complicated breakup. One player gave you 31 games and left you wondering about a road that never got traveled.<\/p>\n

Which one stayed with you longer? That\u2019s the vote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Two-Timelines Bracket is rolling. The question isn\u2019t who performed best; it\u2019s who did you believe in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":662779,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3786],"tags":[7,479,164,64551,4025,4024,6,255],"class_list":{"0":"post-662778","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-golden-state-warriors-discussion","12":"tag-goldenstate","13":"tag-goldenstatewarriors","14":"tag-nba","15":"tag-warriors"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116244429628913119","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662778","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=662778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662778\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/662779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=662778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=662778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=662778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}