Last spring, the Warriors made the bold but correct decision to trade away 21-year-old James Wiseman.
But don’t expect a similar decision with 21-year-old Jonathan Kuminga, who is reportedly complaining about how Warriors coach Steve Kerr is using him.
Yes, again.
It’s undeniable that Kerr made a bad call to keep the rock-solid Kuminga on the bench as the Warriors’ best win of the season turned into the worst loss of the season in a mammoth fourth-quarter collapse.
But the Warriors organization still believes in Kuminga, even if Kerr’s belief in the 21-year-old can understandably wane.
Kuminga’s passive-aggressive complaints do highlight real issues, though.
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The first is macro: This passive-aggressive nonsense Kuminga is peddling is a real issue for the NBA. It’s hard to take the league seriously when this is how “business” is all too often conducted.
Kuminga just did what every other 21-year-old with a job does — complained about his boss behind his back.
But then the people in his employ told an NBA newsbreaker.
Kuminga’s comments are the modern NBA in a nutshell. When you empower 21-year-olds as a policy, no one can be surprised if they — and their people — fail to uphold the highest standards of professionalism.
And the media machine that will use this tidbit of news as a jumping-off point to offer Warriors epitaphs and countless trade proposals (half of which are impossible under the NBA’s collective bargaining agreement) only pours gasoline on the flame.
If you didn’t know better, you’d think the NBA’s actual product was reality TV-level drama.
I am told it is, in fact, basketball.
So let’s talk about the day-to-day basketball issue that’s at hand for the Warriors:
It’s the Andrew Wiggins of it all. Again. Still.
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With Kerr preferring two-guard lineups and with Draymond Green soon to return to the lineup, the Warriors have a logjam on the wing.
That’s Klay Thompson’s new position.
That’s Wiggins’ position.
And it’s the position where Kuminga — arguably playing better than both Thompson and Wiggins this season — deserves the most run.
Kerr is left in a jam in big situations like Thursday’s. Should he go with champion veterans or the young player whose career progression calls for him to play those minutes?
The choice is obvious in the aftermath of a loss like Thursday’s. But hindsight is undefeated.
But it all comes back to the Warriors’ biggest problem: Wiggins, the second-best player on a title team two years ago has become untrustworthy.
The Warriors traded for the former No. 1 overall pick when his value was low. In short order, he became the best wing on a championship team.
But he is so far from that status today. Even with his team-friendly (at least it was at the time it was signed), the Warriors would be selling low on the Canadian.
It’s difficult to explain why Wiggins’ game has deteriorated. The mystery of his months-long absence late last season was never fully explained, either. And he’s been MIA on the court for most of the Warriors’ games this season.
After shedding the label for a season — one that ended in a title — Wiggins is back to being an enigma. You simply do not know what you’re getting from him on a quarter-by-quarter basis.
The same can be said for Kuminga, but one player is 21, and the other is 28 with a decade of NBA experience.
Plus, Wiggins cannot play with the Warriors’ other wings, and they cannot play with him.
It’s bad. Really bad. In 131 minutes together on the floor, Kuminga and Wiggins have posted a net rating (points per 100 possessions) of minus-22.
That’s Pistons-level bad.
It’s so bad that it makes Wiggins’ pairing with Thompson seem pretty good. But it also is, in fact, bad: Wiggins and Thompson are minus-11 in 500 minutes together this season.
There’s another issue with enigmas, though: They’re really difficult to trade.
The easy thing for the Warriors to do is ship out Wiggins for a rotation center or a player behind Kuminga in the wing pecking order. But there’s no market for a player like Wiggins. Not unless you’re looking to bring back another problem.
And the Warriors would be foolish to sweeten a Wiggins trade package with draft picks.
Yes, the Dubs can attach Moses Moody to Wiggins, but does that really change anything?
Perhaps something new, interesting, and fruitful will develop on that trade market in the coming weeks, but as things stand right now, there’s no move to be made for Golden State.
Not with Wiggins playing like this.
And that leaves Kerr with an unenviable choice night in, night out: He has three players that he can’t trust for two spots (at best) in the team’s closing lineup.
Does he bench Thompson, a future Hall of Famer and the second-greatest shooter of all time?
Or does he bench the wing whose brilliant playoff run lifted the Warriors to their fourth title?
Or does he bench the 21-year-old whose game is still developing?
All three have been the odd-man out this season. All three have handled that disappointment in different ways.
Thompson pushed out “negative energy.” He’d brood on the bench. He says that’s going to change now.
Wiggins became more aloof. It’s evident in his play.
And Kuminga, after hinting at it for months, finally created some big public drama over something ultimately private and forgettable.
In the NBA, wings are destiny, and those are the Warriors’ options at the position.
Kerr is in a no-win scenario.
So should it be surprising the Warriors aren’t winning much, either?
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