Looking back on missed draft picks is a form of masochism... but sometimes we have to do it anyway. Joe Lacob's decision to draft Jonathan Kuminga over Franz Wagner in 2021 is a franchise-altering draft blunder the Warriors now have to live with for the next decade. Lacob "...was a driving force in the selection [of Kuminga] when others, including a few on the coaching staff, voiced a Franz Wagner preference," according to Anthony Slater and Shams Charania of ESPN.
If you're wondering just how poorly the pick has aged, well, the Warriors — as you know — are currently haggling with Kuminga for a few extra dollars and a team option. Wagner, meanwhile, will make $51 million in 2029-30 with the Orlando Magic after signing a (well-deserved) extension over a year ago that keeps him with the team for the next five seasons.
Missing out on a star in the NBA Draft always hurts, sure. But that pain is amplified tenfold when the miss only happened because one voice in the room — in this case (and other cases) it was Lacob's —overpowers the voices of others, and that was the case here.
Sports owners; not great at listening to others!
Joe Lacob made two devastating picks in two years
When a team is consistently competing for championships like the Warriors have been during Lacob's tenure as owner of the Warriors, high draft picks don't come around too often. However, in 2020 and 2021, the Warriors had picks with the potential to propel the franchise into its next era of success.
Instead, the team picked Kuminga in 2021 and James Wiseman the year prior, who Lacob called a "once-in-a-decade kind of guy," which was simply never true, but I digress.
Yes, Lacob made some franchise-changing draft picks for the better. This team wouldn't have four rings if Lacob didn't draft Draymond Green and Klay Thompson — who his son basically forced him to pick... Maybe Lacob will listen to people, if they're in his direct bloodline.
Alas, the Wiseman and Kuminga picks in back-to-back seasons completely derailed the best chance of building a young core for the post-Steph and Draymond days (which I know no one wants to think about, and fair enough).
Kuminga still has potential to be great, but not with the Warriors
I think the common belief among Warriors fans is that Jonathan Kuminga could still turn into the player everyone hoped he'd become when the Warriors drafted him. After all, he's 22 years old and has two seasons of over 15 points per game already under his belt.
But the belief that his development will continue with the Warriors is much less common. Kuminga's relationship with the Warriors already felt strained last season, and this nightmare offseason standoff between team and player surely hasn't helped mend that union.
And it all could have been avoided. Drafting Franz Wagner wouldn't have solved everything, but... it would have definitely solved this restricted free agency fiasco because it would have prevented it in the first place. And the only thing that stood between that hypothetical being reality was Joe Lacob.