NBA Draft: How does Jonathan Kuminga fit with the Warriors?

Warriors Draft Prospect Jonathan Kuminga: Defensive Growth Areas

Kuminga spent most of his time defensively on the perimeter, which was perhaps the first mistake. He showed poor ability to keep track of his man and had to make endless desperate rotations.

Often he’d be caught staring at the ball while his man floated to the corner for a wide-open skip pass and shot. Kuminga’s positioning pre-rotation was also not great, meaning when he had to make surprise rotations he had too much ground to cover.

When caught on ballhandlers, he was flat-footed and got put in hip jail often. Some of his recoveries on drives are slick and he can erase shots from all angles. But on the whole, Kuminga’s relative lack of agility and poor instincts on the perimeter turned him into barbecue chicken.

The good news for Kuminga is that teams are more willing than ever to forgive these mistakes. With a gun to their head, most teams would rather have the frame of a defender and have to build the mental side than vice versa.

You can take an undersized or slow player and make him stronger, more agile, bouncier, but you can’t magically lengthen his arms and torso (If you somehow know how to do that, my DMs are open).

Kuminga may be near the basement in terms of baseline defensive instinct and competence, but he can be coached into a non-liability, possibly even an asset. After all, he’s only 18 and already 6-foot-8 with 220 pounds of muscle. It could be worse.