Don’t look now, but as the Golden State Warriors continue to play contract chicken with Jonathan Kuminga — a stuck-in-the-mud saga that has prevented them from making a single roster move this summer — training camp begins in about two weeks. A resolution has to come at some point.
It’s been well chronicled throughout the summer that there are basically three options: Kuminga can take the one-year, $7.9 million qualifying offer to come back to Golden State and become an unrestricted free agent in 2026. He can accept the Warriors’ long-standing two-year, $45 million offer with a team option for the second season. Or, someone can budge.
That someone could be one of the teams reportedly interested in a sign and trade for Kuminga, notable the Suns and Kings, the latter of whom could, for example, remove the protections on the 2030 first-round picks that they have reportedly offered, along with Malik Monk, in exchange for Kuminga. Maybe that would entice the Warriors to get this thing done.
Short of that, the Warriors could give in and accept one of the sign-and-trade offers as is, or they could sweeten their own offer to Kuminga by, say, guaranteeing a third year on a deal, which would put Kuminga on their books through 2028. Why would that be a problem? Because according to Sam Amick of The Athletic, Golden State is set on “maintaining maximum flexibility” for the summer of 2027 when Nikola Jokić and Giannis Antetokounmpo are both in position to become free agents. It’s the same reason the Warriors have been hesitant to add Monk in a potential deal with the Kings.
Monk’s current contract runs through the 2027-28 season, when he has a player option worth $21.5 million. The length of his deal poses a similar problem to the one the Warriors have had in the negotiations with Kuminga, as they want to maintain maximum flexibility for that 2027 summer (as it stands, they only have [Moses] Moody’s $13.4 million and Hield’s $10 million player option on the books by then).
The Warriors, who are well aware that Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo and Denver’s Nikola Jokić both have player options for the 2027-28 season, are hardly alone on this star-hunting front. High-profile teams like the Lakers and Clippers have sent similar signals in recent months.
Wait, so you’re telling me the Warriors, along with any other basketball team in the world, would be interested in signing either Jokic or Antetokounmpo, who together have won five of the last seven MVPs? This is hardly news. What is interesting, or perhaps frustrating would be a more appropriate descriptor for Warriors Twitter, is that Golden State continues to cling to hypothetical pipe dreams — the two-timeline plan actually bearing fruit, for instance — rather that putting more of, if not all of, their eggs into the basket of maximizing the remainder of Stephen Curry’s golden years.
Yes, they traded for Jimmy Butler. That’s not nothing. But that move hardly cost them anything. They didn’t have to give up any of their young players that they have, let’s be frank, overrated internally pretty much from Day 1, and they have only made matters worse by not committing to their development, although it would’ve been equally problematic to cripple a team with contention aspirations with consistently inconsistent NBA kids. It’s a sticky spot — one that it’s reasonable to argue the Warriors should’ve avoided in the first place by drafting players in keeping with their system-and-style needs/preferences rather than physically gifted projects like Kuminga and James Wiseman.
Nonetheless, they didn’t do that, and here they are wrestling with the ramifications of either bending too much to Kuminga’s wants or not bending enough and winding up with an incredibly awkward situation with Kuminga back on the team with no desire to be there and no clear role to fill.
It’s important to note, all the social media GMs and coaches notwithstanding, there are no obvious moves here. Hindsight is 20/20, but from where things stand right now, roster flexibility and avoiding long-term and lucrative commitments to unproven players is a basically front office 101 in this new second-apron era. Everyone is doing it. You have to. Every dollar, and certainly every year on a contract, matters greatly. As Amick noted, other teams are eyeing Jokić and Antetokounmpo in 2027 as well. It isn’t some stupid strategy. It just doesn’t mean they have an actual realistic chance of getting them, either.
The smart money says Jokić resigns with Denver (it’s almost impossible to see him leaving from where I sit) and Giannis gets traded before 2027, likely to a team with which he then extends, just as Luka Dončić did with the Lakers. It could go differently, sure. But Jokić and Antetokounmpo both getting to free agency two summers from now is a long shot in itself. Then they would have to actually leave the teams they are with at that point, another long shot (especially in the case of Jokić). And then, if those two flyers actually land, they have to choose your team from a long list of big-city suitors. You ever put three long-shot bets on the same parlay ticket? If you have, you know they don’t all hit very often.
But here’s the thing: It’s not just Jokić and Antetokounmpo who slot as potential 2027 free agents. It could very well up being a loaded group. Check out the top names the Warriors could go after (excluding Curry, Butler and Draymond Green, all three of which are currently due to come off Golden State’s books in … you guessed it … 2027).
That’s not a bad list, and there are some other nice names below this tier as well (Brandon Ingram, Jerami Grant, Cam Johnson and Jalen Green to name a few). But ask yourself how many of those players a team like Golden State would really want to build their post-Curry era around? Save for a few, they’re all going to be very old by 2027.
So what, or who, are you really saving up for? Michael Porter Jr.? Dejounte Murray? Josh Hart? Kyle Kuzma? DeAndre Hunter? The idea of having an open and flexible cap sheet certainly carries general value beyond a specific target, but so too does taking a title shot while you still have a realistic one to take.
Is it really worth taking half-measures over these next few years in the hopes that you strike a very unlikely pot of gold two summers from now? And how does Kuminga — whether to bring him back, and if so on what terms, or trade him now, or at the deadline — factor into this equation?
It’s all pretty difficult to balance. Every plan is bound to compromise another. Priorities can be hard to clearly identify. On some level, this is all a guessing game that can’t be talked about in any form except hypotheticals more than a year out. But again, the Warriors aren’t years out from training camp. They’re back on the court in a couple of weeks. Stay tuned.
