After sitting out the final 18 minutes of Thursday night's loss to the Denver Nuggets, Golden State Warriors forward Jonathan Kuminga has lost faith in coach Steve Kerr, and the 2021 lottery pick no longer believes Kerr has him will allow him to reach his full potential, sources say Kuminga tells The Athletic, adding another layer of turmoil to an already complex Warriors season.
“(Thursday night) was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” one of the sources said.
Kuminga had another strong performance Thursday night with 16 points on 5 of 7 shooting, four rebounds and four assists, posting a team-high plus-6 mark in just 19 minutes of action – a continuing trend of the 6-foot-7 winger's athleticism and ever-improving shooting technique serve as a catalyst for a Warriors team desperately in need of the rim pressure and youth it provides.
He made it 1-1 with six minutes left in the third quarter, and Kerr replaced him 12 seconds later along with Klay Thompson and Kevon Looney from the game. While Thompson returned to start the fourth period and Looney re-entered the game with just under eight minutes left, Kuminga did not.
“He played great,” Kerr said of Kuminga after the game. “His normal time to get back into the game would have been about five, six minutes (of the fourth). (Andrew Wiggins) played great, we had a lead of 18, 19, whatever it was. So we just stayed with him. Then (later) it didn’t feel like the right thing to do. He had been sitting for a while. So I stayed with the group that was out there and of course we couldn’t complete it.”
The Warriors were trailing 85-84 when they took Kuminga out of the game. At the end of the third quarter, the group with Wiggins and without Kuminga helped build a 13-point lead, which grew to an 18-point lead with six minutes left in the fourth quarter. Kerr never returned to Kuminga and the Warriors squandered that lead. It was the fourth time this season that they turned a lead of at least 18 points into a loss.
Kuminga and Wiggins are the Warriors' two biggest wings – and their best theoretical chance to bolster a leaky perimeter defense that has dropped the 16-18 Warriors to 20th in defensive rating.
But they didn't work together. In 131 minutes together, Kuminga and Wiggins were a combined minus-66. Kuminga replaced Wiggins in the starting lineup 11 games ago, but Wiggins' steady inclusion in the rotation has still resulted in Kuminga playing a few fewer minutes than expected despite his good performance.
“Their numbers taken together are not good, frankly,” Kerr said late last month. “They are very unnecessary. So the tape and the numbers weren't that great. But we are also clear that we have the level we need to really compete at the highest level. And when those two guys can coexist on the floor, it actually gives us increased athleticism and potential. But we need to find the right combination of people around those two.”
This problem dates back to last postseason. Kuminga played a crucial role in the Warriors' rise to the sixth seed over the past two months, while Wiggins was away from the team due to a personal matter. But when Wiggins returned for the first game of the playoffs, Kuminga disappeared from the rotation.
That is no longer the case. Kuminga has worked his way into a bigger part of the action – he has played in every game he has played in this season – but still has to watch from the sidelines in some crucial moments of the season. This also included Christmas, when he sat on the bench for the last three minutes of a defeat in Denver and caused confusion for our Marcus Thompson after the game.
“Sometimes after the game I don’t know what I did,” Kuminga said. “And that messes with my head. It's like, 'What do they want me to do?' I can pass and I can do different things.”
Now there's a loss of trust between player and coach, a crumbling partnership for two men in Kuminga and Kerr that Golden State must coexist going forward.
Kuminga, the 21-year-old selected No. 7 in the 2021 NBA Draft, has begun to thrive this season as opportunities have increased. Kerr made Kuminga the starter on December 14 against the LA Clippers after Draymond Green was suspended indefinitely. In those 11 starts, Kuminga averaged 14.6 points, 5.4 rebounds and 2.5 assists while shooting 56.6 percent from the field in 25.5 minutes per game. Additionally, he has scored double-digit points in his last 14 games.
The frontcourt rotation mix will only get busier and more complicated when Green returns from his suspension relatively soon. The February 8th trade deadline is still a month away and this struggling Warriors team must decide how to move forward with an expensive roster that isn't currently cutting it.
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(Photo: Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images)
