Once again, the Golden State Warriors are back on the Jonathan Kuminga rollercoaster. Now that Jimmy Butler is out for the season with a torn right ACL, Kuminga, who had not played in 16 straight games, was thrust back into Steve Kerr's rotations on Tuesday night against the Toronto Raptors.
Although Golden State lost this game 145-127, snapping their season-long four-game winning streak, Kuminga showed up in a big way with 20 points on 7-of-10 shooting from the floor in 21 minutes off the bench.
Even after Kerr decided to sit his young forward for over a month, Kuminga stayed ready and raised many eyebrows not just in San Francisco on Tuesday night, but across the NBA with the trade deadline roughly two weeks away.
Kuminga and his camp have not been shy about expressing their displeasure with the Warriors, as it was very clear this past offseason that the former lottery pick desired a change in scenery. Kuminga's agent, Aaron Turner of Verus Basketball, has previously expressed his frustration with the Warriors on social media, and he took a moment after Tuesday's game to respond to Mike Dunleavy Jr.'s recent comments about his client.
“Demand is sensitive to price or playing time,” Turner wrote in a post he tagged former Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and former two-time All-Star Victor Oladipo in. “So if a seller sees demand is low, lower the price point or let him play and demand will go⬆️#IUEconomicsMajor #Nationalchamps.”
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Oladipo is another one of Turner's clients, as both of them attended Indiana University.
This comment on social media came hours after Dunleavy held a press conference to discuss Butler's season-ending injury and Kuminga's role moving forward. When asked about Kuminga and his agent's demand for a trade from the team, Dunleavy made his and the Warriors' stance very clear: “When you make a demand, there needs to be a demand.”
Even though he is back in the rotation with Butler out, the marriage between Kuminga and the Warriors seemed to end a long time ago. Whether or not there is a market for him before this season's trade deadline and whether the Dubs can find a trade that gives them the value needed to remain contenders this season are the big questions this organization will face over the next two weeks.
Although this relationship between Kuminga and the Warriors is clearly fractured and beyond a point of no repair, he will continue to be a key weapon for Kerr to utilize off the bench for the time being.