Jonathan Kuminga returned after missing 31 straight games with an ankle sprain.
Jonathan Kuminga returned after missing 31 straight games with an ankle sprain.
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SAN FRANCISCO — As bombastic as Draymond Green’s championship aspirations have been, his assessment that the Warriors still have a long way to go is as honest.
Jonathan Kuminga gives them a chance at making that leap.
The Warriors have already skipped from 11th to sixth. To jump from dark horse to true contender, they need a talent infusion. Kuminga is just that.
In Kuminga’s first action since suffering a severe ankle sprain on Jan. 4, he scored 18 points in 20 minutes on 7-for-10 shooting. He didn’t have the ball in his hands nearly as much as he did before his injury, but the Warriors didn’t need him to. They have Jimmy Butler now, a model for Kuminga and another player to create advantages for Kuminga and to push him defensively.
Even within the Warriors, there was curiosity about how Kuminga would acclimate himself to a team that had won 12 of 13 games with Butler in the lineup. Even though it was just one game, Kuminga put a lot of questions “to bed,” as Green likes to say.
“I think the game kind of just slows down more,” Kuminga said. “And the more it slows down, the more it’s a lot of open space. You can just go out there and get things easy. I think just having Jimmy and the way everybody’s playing, it makes everybody’s life easier.”
Despite nerves coming with the longest injury of his life, Kuminga didn’t press. He’d talked several times with Steve Kerr about making winning plays and fitting into a team suddenly rolling. Green constantly reminded him to be himself and play his game. All the voices in Kuminga’s ears didn’t cloud his mind. He never tried to do too much, instead pushing pace, slashing to the basket and finishing at the rim off cuts. He slammed down three dunks in quick succession late in the fourth quarter, stamping a 130-104 win over the Kings and looking just as bouncy as he did before the injury.
“I think that’s the moment I realized I was out there with the crew and everything was just going the right way,” Kuminga said.
Kuminga’s back with the crew, and now the crew has a higher ceiling.
“You need that athleticism, you need that force,” Green said. “The game’s only going to get more and more physical as we get down the stretch into the playoffs, and he can match that physicality. He can also get down and use people’s physicality and pressure against them. It’s huge. We’ve been in a groove, but I don’t think there’s a soul in this building that thought just because we’re in that groove we don’t need him back. We needed him back in a major way.”
The Warriors are now a season-high 10 games over .500 and clicking on both sides of the court. But there’s still levels to championship contention, and Golden State knows that better than every team. The Thunder have been the conference’s best team from tape to tape. The Lakers loaded up with the Luka Doncic trade and Denver still has the world’s best player in Nikola Jokic. In the East, there’s the defending champion Celtics and the Cavaliers, who are on pace to win the most games in the NBA.
Even at their best, with Butler, the Warriors haven’t made a claim to joining that class. But folding in Kuminga and getting the most out of him could change that.
Against the Kings, Kuminga got his points by driving closeouts, pushing in transition and cutting off the ball. After his first bucket, owner Joe Lacob stood up in his courtside seat and thrusted both fists in the air. There was no over-dribbling, ball-stopping or going 1-on-1, and he still scored almost a point per minute.
“I love it,” Butler said. “High energy, jumping out the gym. Dunking the basketball. I want him to be him. And the best of his abilities, continuing to be great to help this squad achieve something special.”
Kerr has tempered expectations about Kuminga in his public comments, saying he’ll need to adapt to a new role and commit to making winning plays and not putting too much pressure on himself to be The Guy. In a sense, he’s right. Kuminga doesn’t need to run pick-and-rolls like he did — fairly well – in several games before the sprained ankle. It should be easier to get his points, off backdoor cuts and dives to the basket.
But for the Warriors to get to where they want to go, they need Kuminga at his best — in whatever role that may take. They’ll need him to be able to fit in lineups with Steph Curry, Green, Butler and a fourth player (likely Moses Moody) to optimize the amount of talent on the floor. The best teams are able to close quarters and games with their five best players, and Kuminga is unabashedly one of Golden State’s five best players.
“I think defensively, it gives us the most versatility,” said Curry, who made his 4,000th career 3-pointer. “To allow Draymond be the anchor, Jimmy do what he does, and us to be able to switch all over the floor…we’re going to see it a lot down the stretch and hopefully it can be something we can feature in the playoffs.”
When Kuminga checked out for the last time, after the Warriors had dealt Sacramento the knockout blow, Kuminga smiled and shared a big high-five with Kerr. Kuminga is the Warriors’ upside. Even though he got drafted four years ago, he’s still their lottery ticket. Their X-factor. If Golden State is to make a real run, they need more firepower, and he’s their ammo.
“The fact that we added another finisher, a guy who can get downhill,” Curry said. “You saw how composed he was. Taking those seams, those advantages. Another athlete, another finisher, another guy the defense has to worry about. That’s always a good thing.”