One of the most critical storylines of the season.
There’s no shortage of things that went wrong for the Golden State Warriors last year. Fill a page with the numbers one through 100 and start filling them out with how the Dubs ended a promising campaign with a humiliating play-in tournament loss, and you’ll soon be writing “101” on another page. The issues with the team came by the dozens and the hundreds.
One of the biggest issues — and one of the ones that eventually became most talked about — was the team’s utter awfulness when Andrew Wiggins and Jonathan Kuminga shared the court together. The numbers were nothing short of dramatic for the bulk of the season, though a late-season surge helped bring them back to mediocrity, rather than atrociousness.
There was a common refrain when discussing the inability of those two to play together, an issue that was so in the open that Steve Kerr even addressed it numerous times. It was said that Wiggins and Kuminga were “redundant,” which always seemed like a dishonest word to me. If the Warriors could clone a second Steph Curry and start him next to the first Steph Curry, they’d have the world’s most redundant backcourt, and I’m pretty sure they’d be the best offense in the NBA.
The problem with Kuminga and Wiggins wasn’t that their skills were redundant, it was that their weaknesses were redundant. Which is to say that both had mediocre three-point shots, a tendency to stagnate and isolate on offense rather than play within the motion system, and an issue with defensive lapses and forgetting to rebound.
Some players just don’t fit on the floor together, and that’s OK. But it’s not OK if those players are Wiggins and Kuminga, because the Warriors simply cannot afford to have the minutes totals for those two players add up to 48 or fewer on any given night.
Wiggins is only two years removed from being an All-Star, and is on a massive nine-figure deal for the Warriors; the hope and goal is that he’s a starter. But Kuminga is one of their prized lottery picks who, if he is to reach an extension agreement before the October 21 deadline, will also be on a nine-figure contract. He was probably the Warriors’ third-best player last year, and deserves to be playing starter minutes.
Those two things are not compatible unless Wiggins and Kuminga are compatible.
Even if they are compatible, things will be complicated as Kerr tries to allocate minutes. A starting lineup with both of these hyper-athletic wings would have to include Kuminga at the four (the only position Kerr has been comfortable playing him), which would slide Draymond Green to the five. Not only does that remove Trayce Jackson-Davis from the starting lineup, but it makes the Dubs notably worse defensively ... they were much better last year when they put TJD in the starting lineup and let Green shine as a versatile four.
So how do they get to a point where Kuminga and Wiggins are compatible? For the youngster, it means become more fluid in the motion offense, and increasing his three-point shooting. For the veteran, it means returning to his All-Star ways, or at least near them. It’s a stunningly simple plan, but much easier said than done.
The Warriors tried to trade Wiggins this offseason, and failed. And they were seemingly open to trading Kuminga for a big name. If they find out — be it in training camp or the first few weeks of the season — that these two still can’t play together, they’ll surely have to revisit those conversations.
