Jonathan Kuminga returning to Warriors on two-year, $48.5 million deal

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At the beginning of the offseason, Warriors general manager Mike Dunleavy spoke about his desire to resolve Jonathan Kuminga’s future “sooner than later.”

Desire alone, though, wasn’t enough to speed up the process.

The 22-year-old Kuminga, dealing with a tricky restricted free-agency environment similar to that of Josh Giddey, Cam Thomas, and Quentin Grimes, dragged high-profile negotiations about as long as he could.

But, at long last, the Occam’s razor conclusion prevailed, as Kuminga signed a two-year, $48.5 million extension, per ESPN. In 2025-26, he’ll earn roughly $15 million more than he would on the one-year qualifying offer.

The contract, which was among the standing offers Kuminga’s camp had to consider for weeks, reportedly includes a team option in the second year, making it one guaranteed season. A deal worth $75 million over three years (with a team option in the third year) was also on the table. The team also explored a variety of sign-and-trade scenarios throughout the summer and could look to trade him before the February deadline.

Kuminga’s agent, Aaron Turner, was public about his desire to flip the team option to a player option — in an effort to get his client more control over his future — during negotiations, but Golden State didn’t budge.

With Kuminga’s deal done, pending free agent signings Al Horford and De’Anthony Melton are expected to finalize their contracts to fill out Golden State’s roster. Seth Curry is also reportedly joining the team, possibly on a training camp deal that will likely be converted later to a standard deal.

Kuminga (as well as Horford and Melton) were absent at Monday’s Media Day. Steph Curry, Jimmy Butler, and Draymond Green expressed support for the young wing and downplayed the idea that it’d be a distraction.

“When he comes and he’s here, he should be a professional and do exactly what he expects to do and take advantage of his opportunities to help us win,” Curry said. “Everybody who’s in the locker room, that’s what you’re committed to do. So I don’t have any concerns that he’ll approach it that way.” 

Head coach Steve Kerr likewise projected calm regarding the summer-long contract drama.

“We’ve been through a lot bigger deals than this,” Kerr said Tuesday. “I don’t think this is that big of a deal. This is business. Contract disputes happen all the time in sports. Again, I’m not concerned; we expect this to get resolved soon.”

The Kuminga situation has rarely been comfortable since the day the Warriors drafted him with the seventh overall pick in the 2021 NBA Draft. He was eager to prove himself in the league but joined a championship team that didn’t need his burgeoning talent. Even as the Warriors’ 2022 title roster atrophied, Kuminga failed to earn a consistent role as the coaching staff urged him to commit to rebounding, defense, and letting his scoring come within the flow of the offense. During crucial developmental years for Kuminga, Kerr at times preferred veterans such as Anthony Lamb or Gary Payton II. 

The push and pull of a young, promising player — particularly one of Kuminga’s ambitions thrust onto a veteran-laden roster — isn’t out of the ordinary. But the highs and lows of Kuminga’s early-career arc have been stark. He stepped in impressively for Andrew Wiggins in the second half of the 2023 season, only for his role to get scaled back upon the wing’s return. Early the following year, Kuminga reportedly “lost faith” in Kerr after the legendary coach benched him for the final 18 minutes of a regular-season game. 

Kuminga played the best basketball of his career in stretches of last season, leading several team sources to publicly say he’d turned a corner. Kuminga was the team’s third-leading scorer in 2024-25 and averaged 20.5 points and six rebounds over a 14-game sample in which he temporarily supplanted Draymond Green from the starting lineup. 

But then a severe ankle sprain interrupted what looked to be a breakout season, sidelining Kuminga for two months. When he returned, the Butler trade had completely altered the DNA of the Warriors, and Kuminga struggled to re-acclimate. 

The Warriors lost the 125 minutes with Kuminga and Butler on the floor together by 20 points. Golden State, in a sprint up the Western Conference playoff standings, couldn’t afford experimentation and pulled Kuminga from the rotation. 

After getting benched in a pivotal regular-season finale, the play-in game, and four of seven first-round matchups against Houston, the Warriors needed to go back to Kuminga because of Curry’s strained hamstring. The young forward stayed ready behind the scenes and responded with 18, 30, 23, and 26 points in matchups with an elite Minnesota defense. 

It was the type of performance that fed into Kuminga’s long-held belief that he can be a star. He grew up idolizing Kobe Bryant and has clearly gravitated more toward a role as an isolation scorer than the Swiss Army Knife archetype the coaching staff hoped he’d embrace. (Kerr has mentioned Shawn Marion on multiple occasions.) 

“I feel like I’m at the point where that has to be my priority, to just be one of the guys a team relies on,” Kuminga told The Athletic in an offseason interview. “Aiming to be an All-Star. Multiple times. Aiming to be great. … Wherever I’m going to be at, it don’t matter if it’s the Warriors or if it’s anywhere else, it’s something I want. I want to see what I could do. I know I got it. So I want to really see. I’ve never got that chance.”

His best chance at stardom won’t come on the Warriors this year — not with the core of Curry, Butler, and Green still leading. But on such an old team, there should be ample chances for Kuminga when some of the veterans are either resting or injured. Although a plug-and-play featured role isn’t the type of steady opportunity Kuminga seeks, it will be important for Golden State to get through the regular season nonetheless.

The Warriors are expected to use the early portion of the season to experiment with lineup combinations and see what they can do to maximize Kuminga in their ecosystem. His performance in that stretch could determine his and the team’s next steps.