The longstanding contract impasse between the Golden State Warriors and forward Jonathan Kuminga doesn’t appear close to a resolution, but the team reportedly has made a new attempt to bring it to an end.
Per ESPN’s Anthony Slater and Shams Charania, Warriors general manager Mike Dunleavy offered Kuminga a three-year, $75.2 million deal with a team option in the third season late last week. The offer is an increase of the team’s previous proposal for a two-year, $45 million contract.
Slater and Charania noted that the offer comes with “a subliminal understanding that the contract is more trade asset than commitment to a partnership.”
While the Warriors’ latest contract offer would give Kuminga $48.3 million guaranteed in the first two seasons, sources told Slater and Charania that the deal includes the same framework as the previous proposal with a team option on the second season and a waiving of the inherent no-trade clause. Slater and Charania reported that Golden State’s “unwillingness to budge on the team option in those specific two offers is a major part of the holdup” because sources said Kuminga is “resistant to the idea of it.”
The Warriors reportedly made a non-team-option contract offer of three years and $54 million fully guaranteed for an average of $18 million per year, but that is below the annual average salary that Kuminga is seeking.
Sources told Slater and Charania that Kuminga and his agent, Aaron Turner, have “spent much of the summer requesting a player option as part of their preferred deals” and have shown “a willingness to dip down into the $20 million per year range for it.” However, the Warriors “have also viewed a player option as a nonstarter,” while Kuminga and Turner feel that a team option deal “should cost around $30 million per year.”
In July, Turner reportedly presented a proposal to Dunleavy and Warriors salary cap executive Jon Phelps for a three-year, $82 million contract that included a player option. Sources told Slater and Charania that Golden State has been “hesitant to go that rich for that long for Kuminga, showing a concern about how the deal might age.” The team is projected to have “clean books and flexibility” in the summer of 2027 after the contracts of stars Stephen Curry, Draymond Green and Jimmy Butler all expire after the 2026-27 season.
Kuminga also has a qualifying offer on the table of $7.9 million for the 2025-26 season with an Oct. 1 deadline to accept it. Sources told Slater and Charania that one of the latest counter offers from Turner was “presented as a souped-up version of the qualifying offer, getting Kuminga a financial bump (up from $8 million) and unrestricted free agency next summer while wiping away the inherent no-trade clause and allowing the Warriors to use him as an expiring contract at the deadline.”
The contract dispute has caused a major delay in the Warriors’ offseason plans, as they haven’t made any official moves this summer despite lining up “all their other roster targets to pursue after the Kuminga domino falls,” per Slater and Charania. Butler and Green reportedly reached out to Kuminga to check on him, his plans and his mindset.
The Warriors are certainly hoping to resolve this situation quickly as they begin to prepare for the upcoming season with training camp quickly approaching.