Jonathan Kuminga and Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr haven’t always been on the best of terms, and the former’s agent has now called out the latter. Aaron Turner appeared on Steiny & Guru, where he shared Kerr’s sales pitch to the Kuminga camp during negotiations.
“Tell me when you’ve ever seen a player at 20 plus million sign a deal going, this doesn’t make much sense for me from a perfect basketball fit,” Turner said. “And by the way, I might get traded right at the deadline. At that number? I’ve never seen it… The last point where we ended with Steve was, ‘I can’t play this guy big minutes with what I have.’
“Now I don’t think that can’t evolve or can’t change, but that’s where we are right now until we see differently,” Turner continued. “That’s gotta be the worst sales pitch to a $20M+ free agent in the history of basketball. In all seriousness.”
That certainly isn’t an ideal sales pitch.
Turner’s point is quite simple at the end of the day. Kuminga is being asked to take a team-friendly deal of sorts to return to a situation where he isn’t guaranteed playing time because the head coach isn’t convinced at the moment about the fit.
In Turner’s mind, it doesn’t make sense for Kuminga, who averaged 15.3 points, 4.6 rebounds, 2.2 assists, 0.8 steals, and 0.4 blocks per game in 2024-25, to make all the compromises in these negotiations. One can understand that standpoint.
Kuminga has gone through four somewhat difficult seasons with the Warriors after they selected him with the seventh pick in the 2021 NBA Draft. He has never quite been able to win over Kerr, and that has led to his game time fluctuating drastically.
The situation got bad enough to the point in January 2024 that NBA insider Shams Charania reported that Kuminga had lost faith in Kerr. You’d have thought the Warriors might part ways with the forward then, but they held on to him.
Fast forward to April 2025, and Kuminga didn’t play a single minute in the Warriors’ final regular-season game against the Los Angeles Clippers. They had to win that game to avoid the play-in tournament, and Kerr couldn’t find a way to get the 22-year-old on the court.
Kuminga didn’t play in the play-in tournament against the Memphis Grizzlies either. He then only featured thrice in the first-round series against the Houston Rockets, and it looked like we weren’t going to see much of him in the postseason.
The Warriors would suffer a massive injury blow in Game 1 against the Minnesota Timberwolves, though, as Stephen Curry strained his hamstring. Curry would play no further part in the series, and that meant Kuminga finally got an extended run on the court. He’d average 26.3 points on 51.9% shooting from the field over the final three games against the Timberwolves.
Those displays would have only strengthened Kuminga’s belief that he can be an All-Star if he gets to be the featured player in an NBA offense. He first turned down a two-year, $45 million deal from the Warriors this offseason and, more recently, declined a three-year, $75.2 million offer.
In both instances, the Warriors inserted a team option for the final year, while Kuminga and his camp would prefer having a player option. If neither side ends up relenting, then it looks like the forward will accept the one-year, $7.9 million qualifying offer and become an unrestricted free agent in 2026.
