The Jonathan Kuminga staring contest is finally over.
The restricted free-agent forward has agreed to a two-year, $48.5 million deal to stay with the Golden State Warriors, team sources told The Athletic on Tuesday. The deal, which was first reported by ESPN, includes a team option on the second season. It also ends a summerlong standoff in which the 22-year-old tried unsuccessfully to force his way to a healthier and more lucrative basketball home.
In agreeing to this deal, Kuminga opted against signing the one-year, $7.9 million qualifying offer that would have included a no-trade clause and allowed him to be an unrestricted free agent next summer. He instead chooses a compromise deal that comes with a significant benefit for the Warriors, too.
Securing Kuminga on this contract, as opposed to the much smaller qualifying offer, allows Golden State to continue scouring the league for roster upgrades heading into the February trade deadline. That component was a major factor in these months of talks, with the Warriors widely known to be on the lookout for another impact player to fit alongside their core of Steph Curry, Draymond Green and Jimmy Butler.
Kuminga — to this point, anyway — has not been able to fill that role consistently. The No. 7 pick in the 2021 NBA Draft has struggled mightily to fit with the Warriors, often showcasing his skills as a scorer but falling short in many other areas of the game. Now, he must wait a while longer to see where his next stop might be, albeit while enjoying a much bigger payday.
There were times in recent weeks when the prospect of Kuminga signing the qualifying offer looked quite possible, as Kuminga and his agent, Aaron Turner, considered all options amid their failed attempts at facilitating a sign-and-trade deal. There was serious interest from the Phoenix Suns and a reported four-year, $90 million offer, but no significant progress in trade talks with the Warriors.
The Sacramento Kings offered a three-year, $63 million deal to Kuminga, as well as a sign-and-trade arrangement that would have sent veteran guard Malik Monk and a lottery-protected 2030 first-round pick to the Warriors. If that pick didn’t convey in 2030, it would have become the least favorable of the Kings’ and San Antonio’s first-round picks in 2031. But Golden State, for several reasons, ultimately rebuffed the Kings’ pursuit that was the most serious.
The Warriors would have had to trade either Buddy Hield or Moses Moody elsewhere to stay under the first apron of the luxury tax and were against doing so, per team sources. What’s more, they wanted the first-round pick from the Kings to be unprotected. Teams with salary-cap space that could have signed Kuminga to an offer sheet outright — most notably the Brooklyn Nets — never made offers.
Kuminga, meanwhile, will be faced with the same challenge he knows so well from his first four years with the Warriors: gaining the trust of coach Steve Kerr and his staff while trying to convince the rest of the NBA he’s underused. Though Kuminga’s scoring capabilities have never been in question, his struggles in several other aspects of the game — rebounding and help defense chief among them — have limited his opportunities. Those issues existed long before the Warriors traded for Butler in February, but his arrival has made it even trickier for Kuminga to find court time. Kerr has been open about the difficulties in playing Kuminga and Butler together.
For Kuminga’s part, he showed his worth in the Warriors’ second-round series against the Minnesota Timberwolves after Curry went down with a season-ending hamstring injury in Game 1. After being out of Kerr’s rotation for nearly all of the Warriors’ seven-game, first-round series victory against the Houston Rockets, Kuminga averaged a team-high 24.3 points (along with 3.5 rebounds) in the final four games of the Timberwolves series.
The Warriors, who have held off on finalizing other roster business all offseason because of the Kuminga situation, are expected to finalize terms with veterans such as big man Al Horford, as well as guards De’Anthony Melton and Gary Payton Jr.
— The Athletic‘s Joe Vardon contributed to this story.
(Photo: Lachlan Cunningham / Getty Images)