The Golden State Warriors want to have their cake and eat it to with Jonathan Kuminga, and in the process have absolutely disrespected Kuminga with their lowball offer.
That's the opinion of NBA analyst Sam Vecenie, one of the best covering the league on a national level. He believes that Kuminga is absolutely right to be offended by the contract offer on the table from Mike Dunleavy and the Warriors -- but that doesn't mean Golden State is wrong to make that offer.
It has been a thorny issue from the beginning. Kuminga is extremely athletic and naturally talented, and when he is placed into the right situation he can score in bunches. He and his representation can rightfully point to the Minnesota Timberwolves playoff series a few months ago when Kuminga stepped in for an injured Stephen Curry and averaged over 20 points per game against a top-shelf defense. Not many players could have done that.
At the same time, Kuminga has proven unable to scale alongside other star-level players. He has consistently not done the little things asked of role players in the NBA. He wants to score, and when given the ball he tends to do just that. When he is scoring, the rest of his game elevates. If he is in a low-usage role, suddenly all of it falls apart.
Steve Kerr is not one to trust a player whose effort waxes and wanes, and who is not locked into doing whatever it takes to elevate the team. Kerr wants Kuminga to prove himself in a smaller role; Kuminga doesn't want to be shoehorned into that smaller role. And now that Kuminga's contract has run out, the two sides are at an impasse.
The Warriors made a disrespectful offer to Kuminga
Per Anthony Slater and Shams Charania at ESPN, the latest offer to Jonathan Kuminga is a two-year, $45 million deal with a team option on the second year that would require Kuminga to waive his de facto no-trade clause (included in every deal where a player would lose Bird Rights if traded).
Other players with stature have agreed to waive that no-trade clause before, so it's not an insane stance for the Warriors, but it is certainly hardball. They want Kuminga to give up long-term security and short-term control for a contract he already believes is under his value. Will signing this deal put him back in the same situation a year from now?
As Vecenie said, the Warriors are trying to extract every bit of value that they can in a contract. They don't want to lose Kuminga for nothing, they don't want to be hardcapped in a sign-and-trade without a significant asset coming back to them, and they don't want to be limited in their midseason trade options nor locked into paying him next summer. They essentially want Kuminga to give up all agency and upside and do whatever the Warriors decide they want him to do.
It's a miserable situation for Kuminga, and he is right to be disrespected. Yet this is exactly the situation that restricted free agency creates. Kuminga doesn't have any leverage, and if he cannot convince the Brooklyn Nets to sign him to an offer sheet, which they have clearly been unwilling to do, he cannot just find the contract he feels he is worth elsewhere.
The Warriors are banking that Kuminga would rather have $23 million this season than just under $8 million, which is the amount of his qualifying offer. If he decides to take the qualifying offer instead it would be a disaster for the Warriors -- Kuminga would have a no-trade clause, he wouldn't be useful as matching salary in a deal, and he would be an unrestricted free agent next summer with little chance of returning.
Is Kuminga so disrespected by the Warriors' latest contract that he accepts the qualifying offer? Will Dunleavy and company budge and make the offer a little more gracious, be that removing the team option or extending the deal out another season (either would eliminate the no-trade clause as an option, so Kuminga wouldn't need to capitulate on that point)? How this saga ends is still up in the air.
What is clear from the outside is that the Warriors' stance is disrespectful, but it may also prove to be the right stance to take. And that's a reality that is unfortunate for all parties involved.