Extension for Jonathan Kuminga looking unlikely

Jonathan Kuminga took a big leap in his third season for the Golden State Warriors, scoring 16 points per game and starting over half the team’s games. But that doesn’t mean the Warriors are ready to max out their young phenom. Or even extend him this offseason at all.

According to a report from Anthony Slater, the Warriors “aren’t currently prepared to give Kuminga a max extension” before the October 21 deadline to get that done. If teams don’t agree on new deals with their fourth-year players before the beginning of the regular season, they become restricted free agents next summer, with the teams retaining the right to match any offers.

So far, four players from Kuminga’s draft class have signed for the “rookie max” of $224.2 million over five years, starting with the 2025-26 season: No. 1 pick Cade Cunningham, No. 3 pick Evan Mobley, No. 4 pick Scottie Barnes, and No. 8 pick Franz Wagner. Those are the only first-round picks from that draft class to ink extensions so far, though it’s likely we will see more lower-priced extensions as the deadline approaches.

It’s still possible the team and Kuminga could come to an agreement before the season, but there’s a few factors weighing against it. The first is simply that the Warriors, or at least Steve Kerr, aren’t totally sold on Kuminga’s fit with the team. He’s best suited to playing power forward, but his rebounding isn’t exactly what you’d want at that position. Draymond Green is also a power forward, and he’s signed for three more season, and Kerr seemed to prefer lineups that had Green playing alongside center Trayce Jackson-Davis.

Can Kuminga play small forward instead? The two biggest impediments to that are his outside shooting (32% from three-point range last season) and his passing, which saw a slight uptick to 2.2 assists per game but still isn’t very high. If Kuminga showed he could share the court with Andrew Wiggins next year, that would go a long way to justifying a long-term commitment.

Kerr’s comments after the season weren’t all that encouraging:

“Can he become a better passer?” Kerr told reporters a day after the Sacramento Kings beat the Warriors soundly in their play-in game. “I think he sees the floor pretty well, but his fundamentals in terms of passing have to improve if he’s going to play the three. We need him to play the three if we want to have Trayce out there at the five and Draymond at the four. That ideally would be a great defensive lineup. But we’re not ready for that yet as a team.”

Still, Kuminga was clearly one of the Warriors’ best players last year. He was a force driving to the basket, setting the franchise record for dunks in a season and getting to the free throw line more often than any Warrior not named Steph Curry. His defense was inconsistent, but so was the whole team’s in the absence of Green for much of the season. Now, Green actually talks to him, and Kuminga’s on-ball defense has at times been stellar.

He also turns 22 two weeks before the start of the season. For comparison, that’s two years younger than Terrence Shannon and a year-and-a-half younger than Tristan da Silva, both of whom were first-round picks this June. Kuminga is by no means a finished product, and still has a ton of upside.

It comes down to both Kuminga and the Warriors having incentives to wait until next summer. For Kuminga, a big season gives him the possibility of earning a max deal, either from the Warriors or another NBA team. For the Warriors, they retain their flexibility to trade Kuminga if the right deal arises during the upcoming season, something that’s almost impossible if he signs an extension. Plus, the team-friendly nature of restricted free agency means they can simply wait and see what offers Kuminga gets next summer, then decide whether or not to match, or work a sign-and-trade.

Could the two sides find a compromise? Kuminga could opt for the guaranteed, life-changing money of a big extension, something between to the five years and $131 million the Minnesota Timberwolves gave Jaden McDaniels and the $224.2 million rookie max. But it would likely have to be a significant discount for a Warriors franchise that really has no idea where they’ll be next July. Kuminga might help them make a playoff run, or the team could end up in the lottery again.

What might motivate Kuminga to take a non-max deal is the tight nature of free-agent money in the wake of the NBA’s new Collective Bargaining Agreement, with its strict limits on exceeding the various salary cap aprons and various factors that lead to teams being “hard-capped” at certain payroll levels. This year, over half of the league’s teams are hard-capped at the first or second apron, for such reasons as sending out cash in a trade, aggregating salaries in a trade, or using the bi-annual exception, worth a whopping $4.668 million.

Kuminga could play like a max-level player and still discover only a few suitors with enough cash to make him a big offer. But at age 22, he can probably afford to take the risk, gambling that any below-max deal the Warriors might offer him this fall would be available from some team nine months from now.

As for their other fourth-year player, it’s hard to imagine Moses Moody committing long-term to a Warriors franchise that doesn’t seem sure that they want him on the court at all. To this writer, he seems like an obvious asset, but his playing time certainly does not reflect that. Moody also seems much more inclined to get a strong season on his belt, increase his value, and see what his options are in a year.

The Kuminga extension watch deserves attention, but at this point it’s overwhelmingly likely that his future with the Dubs won’t be decided until after the season.