Jonathan Kuminga has struggled to regain his place in the Warriors’ lineup since returning from a sprained ankle on March 13.
The Warriors’ trade-deadline acquisition of Jimmy Butler III has taken some of Kuminga’s minutes, and the young forward still is trying to figure out where he fits in the rotations.
Warriors coach Steve Kerr joined 95.7 The Game’s Mark T. Willard and Dan Dibley on Thursday, where he was asked about Kuminga’s role and how he can co-exist with Butler and four-time NBA champion Draymond Green.
Kerr’s answer seems pretty revealing about what’s on the horizon for the Warriors and the 22-year-old.
“Every game is different and I think Jimmy’s arrival took away a lot of Jonathan’s minutes at the four,” Kerr told Willard and Dibley.”There’s no doubt that as soon as Jimmy arrived and we started winning, we leaned into the lineup combinations that enhanced Jimmy because we were winning and Jonathan was out for that whole stretch.
“We went like 17 and 3 or something, so we’re going to keep doing what’s been winning. But the lineup with Jimmy, Jonathan and Draymond doesn’t fit real well, frankly. It just doesn’t. We need more spacing. We’ve found other lineups that have clicked, and this is just part of the deal, being in the NBA, and you’ve got to adapt to whatever’s happening with the team.
“Jonathan’s done a great job of that. He’s working hard. He’s playing well when he’s out there. But I’m just going with the line of combinations that I think are going to give us the best chance to win, and there’s going to be nights where he’s absolutely part of that like the Lakers game, and then there’s there’s going to be nights where I go to Buddy or Moses or Gary Payton. It just changes every game based on what’s happening, and I have to read that as a coach.”
In 32 games before his ankle injury, Kuminga averaged 16.8 points in 26.0 minutes. But in the 14 games since he returned, he’s down to 12.4 points in 21.1 minutes.
To Kerr’s point, per NBA.com’s lineup data, when Kuminga, Butler and Green are on the court together, they have a minus-24.9 net rating in 38 minutes over 11 games.
But Kuminga is doing the small things to help the Warriors win games, including playing solid defense and guarding the opponent’s best players.
As Green noted after the Warriors beat the Los Angeles Lakers last week, that’s what the team wants to see from Kuminga.
“He was asking for those matchups,” Green told reporters. “That says a lot. We challenged him in private, we challenged him publicly to step up on the defensive end. And he did that. He was great offensively, but he was even better defensively.”
Right now, as the Warriors make an NBA playoff push, they need Kuminga to do the little things to help them win.
What the future holds for Kuminga, who will be a restricted free agent this summer, remains to be seen. But Butler and Green aren’t going anywhere for the next two seasons.
Green has been Kuminga’s biggest advocate, and the Warriors publicly have praised the former first-round draft pick every chance they get. But if he can’t play with two starters, his best shot at a prominent role next year might be elsewhere.
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