Warriors and Jonathan Kuminga eye needed breakup, but they still have to wait another month

Kuminga, who has had a strange tenure as a Warrior, is not eligible to be traded until Jan. 15

Several years ago I had a conversation with Steve Kerr about the nature of being a head coach in the NBA. One of the points he made was that he thought the title was slightly off. He thought maybe they should be called managers, like in soccer, because his job at that level was less about drawing up plays than it was about dealing with disparate personalities. 

I'm reminded of that now and then -- usually when Draymond Green gets a technical and it falls to Kerr and Steph Curry to talk him down -- but last season, and lately, I've thought of it more because of Jonathan Kuminga. Now in his fifth season, Kuminga's playing time and role with the Warriors has been inconsistent to put it mildly. He caught several DNP-CDs in the first round of last season's playoffs against the Rockets, only to be thrust back into the rotation out of necessity in the second round against the Wolves when Curry was hurt. Like his minutes, Kuminga's production was uneven. 

That yo-yoing has continued this season. The Warriors got off to a 4-1 start and Kuminga played well, shooting 53.7% from the floor in 30 minutes per game. It didn't last. It never does. After playing 21 minutes against the Cavs last week, Kuminga didn't see the floor at all in a Warriors win at Chicago. He sat again in the Warriors home loss to the Wolves on Friday and in a loss at Portland on Sunday. 

When he was initially asked about taking Kuminga out of the rotation, Kerr noted that Jimmy Butler had just returned after missing several games with a knee injury. Plus, Kerr wanted to give minutes to Pat Spencer, Gui Santos and De'Anthony Melton. "We have a lot of mouths to feed," is how Kerr put it. Kuminga isn't currently one of them. 

"I can imagine it's not easy for him," Kerr said.

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Probably not. How could it be? For his part, Kuminga has played the professional and publicly said all the right things about working hard and staying ready. He gave a long, oddly serene postgame interview to the media after being benched against the Bulls. Credit to him. Because it's not hard to imagine someone else in his situation popping off and asking out. 

The odd thing about all this is that he doesn't have to do that last part. We've been waiting for Kuminga to wind up in another uniform for a while now. After signing a new contract this offseason -- a process that dragged on for so long that Kuminga was late reporting to training camp -- Kuminga will be eligible to be traded on Jan. 15. His two-year deal pays him $22.5 million this season, with a team option for $24.3 million next year. It's a contract structured to make the 23-year-old easy for the Warriors to trade for someone they might find more useful. Everyone knows it. No one is even trying to hide it, least of all Kerr. 

"My desire for JK is for him to become the best player he can be," Kerr said, "regardless of where he ends up -- whether it's here or elsewhere."

When everyone knows you're headed for a breakup, there's no point in pretending otherwise. Even so, that is some fairly staggering candor from Kerr, not so much a head nod to Kuminga's time as a Warrior being limited as almost saying it explicitly. Kerr said he tells his guys, Kuminga and everyone not named Steph, that "there are so few players who end up playing for one team their entire career." Kerr would know. He played for six teams himself. The privilege of playing in the NBA comes with the unpalatable understanding that you will probably be told to pack your things and move along one day. 

While that's the case for almost every player league-wide, it feels especially true for Kuminga. The Warriors have been uncertain how to use him or what to do with him since he entered the league. There was the infamous two-timelines idea where the organization wanted to play the vets who had won championships while also trying to develop players like Kuminga. That was quickly (and rightly) scrapped when they realized the only timeline that mattered was Curry's. As recently as last season, Draymond was taken out of the starting lineup in favor of Kuminga. Instead of exploding, Green said "a lot of people in this organization, including myself, think [Kuminga] is next. And so if he's next, at some point we've got to see it." It feels safe to say at this point that Kuminga is not in fact next. That Draymond experiment didn't last long, either. And after the Warriors traded for Jimmy Butler, cutting into Kuminga's minutes, Kerr said he didn't like the spacing with those three guys on the floor together. Hard to argue that point.

The Warriors are 13-14 with a point differential just barely above even. They're looking up at the Wolves and Suns and are only a game up on the Grizzlies for the West's No. 8 seed. Their net rating is -4.5 with Kuminga on the floor and +4.1 when he sits. Put everything together and Kuminga ends up as a rotation casualty. 

It's harder to figure is why Kuminga is still a Warrior this season.They could have moved on from him this offseason. Instead they did neither and entered into a contract negotiation that, according to various reports, sounded pretty contentious and unpleasant. Kuminga insists he's moved on, that "whatever happened in the summer, I don't control that. It happened for a reason, but it's the past." That's a good, professional attitude to have, but it doesn't change the fact that he's still in limbo — waiting for the coach to call his name or the general manager to ship him out. 

"It's a weird business to be in because you have to fully commit to the team knowing full well that team may trade you. Or cut you," Kerr said. "That's a really hard thing to reconcile." 

Probably even harder while waiting for it to finally happen from your courtside seat on the bench.