Jonathan Kuminga Has Played Long Stretches of Winning Basketball
Once as a role player, once as a featured scorer.
Many Warriors fans want to see Jonathan Kuminga get traded to a losing franchise. They salivate at the idea of him scoring 20+ points for a franchise that is actually trying to lose. Such a future offers those fans a cathartic vision: that the coach was right to DNP him, the team really is the 19-2 team that finished the season, it was a Curry injury away from a championship, and it just needs to trade JK into a role player to take it over the top.
It isn't just us who think that's a ridiculous opinion. So does the front office. And the front office thinks it’s absurd because Jonathan Kuminga has played long stretches of winning basketball.
Once, as a winning role player. And a second time as a featured scorer.
Before I highlight the two most important stretches, I want to discuss the normal circumstances in which Jonathan Kuminga got to play basketball during his first three years.
I want you to imagine yourself as a modern NBA defense prepared to face the Warriors’ second unit. You see a hyper athletic apex predator wing dribble the ball up the sideline in semi-transition. You know there is not a damn thing in the world you can do stop the guy because he can go left or right, he’s huge, and he’s faster than you. The best you can hope for is to foul him.
However, you have two things in your pocket that make you feel safe. You know this guy is not allowed to take a pull-up three, nor is he allowed to take a two-dribble step-back pull-up in the lane. So you can play him for the drive. You’ll be able to meet him at a spot you know he is trying to get to.
You also know that your big man teammate is guarding Kevon Looney. Not only will he likely ignore Kevon Looney, but Kevon Looney himself will likely be too slow to vacate the space that this player is trying to drive into.
One of my favorite moments from last season was a play in which the Warriors ridiculous announcer Bob Fitzgerald chastized Jonathan Kuminga for not driving to the hoop. Standing right in the middle of the lane is Kevon Looney's man just sitting there. But it did not matter because Kuminga turned baseline and hit a Michael Jorden fadeaway. Have these folks ever played even pick-up basketball? You choose not to drive toward space that someone else is occupying… that’s called getting a soft double. I would assume that 60% of JK's shots are the best available to him, given the personnel he's playing with.
As an aside, this is why plus-minus is a garbage stat. I have no idea why the Coach and Tim Kawakami cite it for individual players on a nightly basis. It really matters who you get played with. 5 man net rating is a decent stat over a long period. Otherwise, it has no meaning.
Anyway, there were two times when Jonathan Kuminga was given heavy minutes alongside the best players on his team. Those players magnified each other. He was doing the little things AND THE BIG THINGS. It was a beautiful ball, and even when it was happening, we knew it was a title-winning mix.
Stretch 1: Jonathan Kuminga, the Role Player.
Take yourself back to the 2022-23 season. The Warriors had just won a title, and Jonathan was entering his 2nd year. There were big expectations for the young man; he had actually had a great first year: his per-36 stats as a rookie surpassed those of Franz Wagner and the other celebrated rookies with more playing time.
Steve Kerr relied heavily on the veteran core at the start of this season, giving big minutes to Steph, Klay, Wiggins, Draymond, and Kevon Looney. There was no plan to shift usage away from Klay and Looney onto Jordan Poole and Jonathan Kuminga. THIS WAS THE ANTHONY LAMB YEAR.
That lineup was a disaster. Jonathan was averaging 13 minutes a game (which includes a 37 and 39-minute game when the vets took the night off in back-to-back games against the Pelicans). That vision brought them a 10-10 the 20 games of the season.
And then everything changed in 2 away games against Utah and Dallas. Utah was decent back then, the vets were out, and Jonathan almost single-handedly willed them to victory. This was the game when he got into a fight with the Utah players after making a crunch time stop. It was incredible. Then, in Dallas, not only did he bring them to within a near victory, but he also seriously harassed Luka all night long.
It was those games that we knew, AND I THINK THE COACH also knew that this guy was a gamer, and the 13 minutes a night needed to stop. That this young man could help them win. Kuminga's minutes started ticking upwards. He was averaging closer to 18-23 minutes. The winning started trending, but then JK got hurt. Another ankle injury.
Fast forward to March 18th, 2023, against the Memphis Grizzlies. The Warriors were 36-35 going into this game and fighting for their play-in tournament lives. This was Draymond’s first game back from suspension, and it was widely expected that they had about 10 games to make a playoff push. Poole was available. Anthony Lamb's role was getting reduced. Klay was still playing way too many minutes, but Kuminga was filling in for Andrew Wiggins, who was dealing with the dad issue.
Kuminga went off in this game, but he got benched for Klay Thompson in the 4th quarter and Klay shot them out of the game (that happened A LOT in Klay's final two years with the Dubs). But the message had been sent. Kuminga needed to be getting minutes.
So it wasn't until the last 11 games of the season that we got to see the full Jonathan Kuminga vision brought to fruition:
Kuminga averaged 24 minutes a game off the bench. He was filling the role player role, averaging 14 ppg, 63% fg, 50% FROM THREE AT 1.27 MAKES A GAME, 70% efg% %, 4.2 reb (in 24 min!), .8 stl, .5 blocks.
The Warriors went 8-3 in this stretch, the only time he got to play with healthy starters. They rose from out of the playoffs to the 6th seed! Avoiding the play-in tournament.
It doesn't matter that he should have been playing more (Lamb was still getting 15 minutes a game or so). It matters that he played a massive role on a winning, healthy team. In Anthony Slater's words, a few weeks ago: "he played a massive role in helping them get to the playoffs at the end of his second year."
He would go on to not hustle for a rebound in game 1 of the Kings’ round 1 series and get benched as a result. They started losing again and were taken to a 7-game series against the injured Kings team, and were too gassed to put up much resistance in round 2. Sound familiar?
Stretch 2: Kuminga the Featured Scorer
Was that stretch too short for you? Thinking of ignoring the fact that the coach iced him all season, and that Draymond was suspend? When he played with the team's best players, they won.
If it was STILL too short, I want to bring you to his 3rd year when we actually got to see the Warriors winning wing lineup. He got to play with Wiggins, Draymond, and Steph + 1 more of their terrible 2 guards (Podz, Klay, CP3, who was being played at sg and SF, not joking). As many of you know, around here, we think wings magnify each other. They cover for each other's defensive mistakes. Playing three guards just leads to fake-news, three-point closeouts and "on fire" opponents.
The coach who shall not be questioned once again iced Kuminga for the majority of the season. They were losing BIG TIME. This was the year Steve Kerr was playing Steph Curry, CP3, and Klay Thompson, and they couldn’t close out on anyone. They were getting torched.
This was the year that Kuminga famously complained through his agent about getting benched in a Nuggets loss despite playing well. If you recall, Joe Lacob very publicly sat through Steve Kerr's press conference that night.
What many people don't remember, however, is the Portland Trail Blazers game a couple of weeks prior. Steve had said before the game that Kuminga was going to be taken out of the lineup fully (he had been on 15 minutes a game or so). That he was shortening the rotation, and it was DNP time.
Well.. what happened was that for the first half of that game, the Warriors were going to lose to the worst team in the league. Steve Kerr panicked at halftime and decided to throw Kuminga in in the third quarter. We firmly believe Steve would have been fired after this game. Check out what happened:
Jonathan Kuminga willed them back and set up Steph Curry for a game-winning shot. It was incredible and was the window into what could be a deep playoff run.
Kuminga would still be yanked in and out of the lineup in December and January. So much so that on January 27th, 2024, they headed to LA 19-24. Thoroughly out of the playoffs. This was this year's Memphis game, which would change the course of the season. It was a double overtime game in which the Warriors barely lost, with Kuminga playing a great role. He would start to get big minutes after this game.
So here you go: After starting the season 19-24, THE NEXT 30 GAMES Jonathan Kuminga would get to START with the best players on the team and he averaged: 19.1 points, 52% shooting, 77% ft, 54 efg% (this would be top 10 all time for a forward playing 30 min if extended over a full season), 5.3 reb per game 1 stl. .7 blks.
The Warriors went 18-11 during this time. Kuminga was playing with the best players, and they were winning, once again.
Look at that. That is a huge chunk of winning. Playing a massive role. And the only thing that changed was that he actually got to play with the best players on the team. It is not that hard to figure out what is going on here and what a coach should do with this roster. Most of the fanbase and nearly ALL of the local media have been hypnotized by the coach-lord's changing tune. First, he can't play at all, then he can't play because Jimmy Butler took his spot, then he can't play because he doesn't fit with the greatest shooter of all time. Think for five seconds about that.
Btw, After that game 2 Minnesota playoff game -- in which it was proven that JK can in fact play SF alongside Jimmy Butler and Draymond Green in the deepest playoff moments -- Steve Kerr unforgivably leaked a story to Logan Murdoch at The Ringer. In a widely shared article, that very night, Steve Kerr told Logan Murdoch that the reason JK doesn't play was because he didn't pass the ball to Steph Curry in a regular-season Portland game. This was a game against a tanking team, i.e., the exact kind of situation you would want your young gun carrying the load for the aging MVP and letting him save his legs. JK was DNP after that game, they went on to lose to the Spurs without Wemby, lost to the Clippers even though JK scored had 30+ against them the last time they played (destroying Zubac), and were a Ja Morant injury away from missing the playoffs.
Before I let you go, I want to highlight one more sick, sad joke about all this. After the first 10 games of this 30 game stretch...
... the same Joe Lacob that sat in that Nuggets press conference to question why Steve Kerr had benched Jonathan Kuminga, GAVE STEVE KERR A 2-YEAR CONTRACT EXTENSION because he finally started playing the best players together.
The owner got bamboozled! Look at this game report from the night before the contract was signed.
Klay Thompson finally got benched! He was terrible all year, and the coach was playing him 30+ minutes a game. That changed in these first 10 games of the 30 game stretch, in which they went 8-2 and Kuminga was getting big minutes. So they gave him the contract.
If you remember, Kuminga would go on to injure his ankle after this 30-game stretch. The coach replaced him with Trace Jackson Davis, and during that 6-game stretch, they beat a bunch of tanking teams. When Kuminga came back, the coach said he wanted to stick to the winning lineup and benched Kuminga. Once again, capping this team’s ceiling and ruining another shot to extend Steph Curry’s legacy. They would go on to miss the playoffs.
THAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED.