You know it’s going to be a rough night when you’re causing trouble before the game even starts.
Saturday’s matchup between the Warriors and Timberwolves was delayed by nearly half an hour due to a perplexing net malfunction on one of the Target Center baskets. Fair enough — we’ve seen this kind of thing before and there isn’t usually a traceable reason for the issue.
Thanks to the Minnesota broadcast, however, it was soon discovered that the likely culprit was Warriors forward Jonathan Kuminga, who was having some fun hanging on the rim and rejecting his teammates’ shots during warmups. Unfortunately his fingers must be more muscular than the average basketball player since whatever he did somehow irreparably damaged the net, which needed to be replaced multiple times.
As embarrassed as Kuminga might have been for the incident, he really didn’t do anything wrong. Later in the game, however, he certainly did.
Warriors coach Steve Kerr went viral with one of his responses following the 113-103 win over the Wolves, calling out unnamed “young players” on his team for seeking out their own shots instead of keeping the ball moving.
“When you have Steph Curry on your team, you pass the ball,” Kerr said. “Because — pass it two or three times, the defense is scrambling, all hell breaks loose. So it’s a choice: We can either do that and win games, or we can shoot a whole bunch of 15-foot contested shots in the middle of the shot clock and be a lousy NBA team. It’s up to us, and we are hammering that point home with our team.”
Never off the clock, the roving horde of tireless internet sleuths quickly found a clip from the game that pretty much illustrated the exact point Kerr was trying to make. Who was at fault? Jonathan Kuminga.
Late in the third quarter, Kuminga drove past Minnesota big man Naz Reid and drew help from four-time Defensive Player of the Year Rudy Gobert. As you can see in the well-edited clip below, Kuminga has an easy kick-out available to teammate Brandin Podziemski — toward whom Curry is clearly pointing to direct the ball.
Instead Kuminga says, “Nah guys, I got this,” and pulls up for a midrange jumper over two defenders with a combined wingspan of over 15 feet (not a joke). Predictably, the shot did not go in — even worse, it hit nothing but backboard — and it was possibly (likely?) the primary source of Kerr’s consternation after the game.
Kuminga has taken 1.3 midrange jumpers per game this season, which ranks third on the team behind Curry and Andrew Wiggins, and has made just 25% of them. The fourth-year forward is also one of nine NBA players this season to average 13 or more field-goal attempts with an effective field goal percentage less than 49% (minimum 20 games). He’s also shooting just 48% on 2-pointers, a mind-boggling figure for someone with such athleticism around the rim. In plain English, he’s been disappointingly inefficient after a breakout 2023-24 campaign in which he averaged a career-best 16.1 points per game on 53% field goals.
Kerr notably inserted Kuminga into the starting lineup in early December and pushed Draymond Green to the bench, essentially saying that the team needed the young forward to flourish if they were going to be successful. An ulterior motive many suspected was to showcase Kuminga for potential trade partners. It worked great in the latter regard, as he averaged 21 points and five rebounds on 40% 3-point shooting in six starts. In the former, it was a failure, as the Warriors went just 2-4 in that stretch.
For the last two Warriors games, a horrific loss to Memphis and Saturday’s win over Minnesota, Kuminga has come off the bench, which cannot sit well with a young man who has been frustrated with his role in the past and clearly views himself as a future star (he very well could be right).
Trade rumors surrounding Kuminga have been rampant basically since the Warriors drafted him No. 7 overall in 2021, but they went to another level when he and the team failed to agree to an extension before the season, which means he’ll be a restricted free agent this June. A realistic Golden State target hasn’t exactly emerged, especially after Lauri Markkanen’s extension in Utah took him off the table until this summer, but recent speculation about the future of Jimmy Butler in Miami has provided the biggest of big fish for which Kuminga could serve as tantalizing bait.
The Warriors have traditionally been hesitant to offer Kuminga in any potential deals (they reportedly refused to include him in a package that would have expanded the Dennis Schroder trade to include Cam Johnson). However, Butler is the type of game-changing addition that can take the middling Warriors back to championship contender status.
With Kerr seemingly frustrated with Kuminga’s offensive mindset and free agency pending, the time could be right to finally pull the trigger on a trade, especially if it lands Butler in Golden State.
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