The Warriors and Kuminga have known for months that, given his restricted-free-agent status, his full-force desire to become a featured part of a team, and his mercurial role in Steve Kerr\u2019s rotation plans over the previous four seasons, this would be complicated. Guess what: It\u2019s been so complicated that even now, almost a month into free agency, there are no strong signs of a resolution. Which means that the Warriors have to hold off on potential signings of Al Horford and maybe De\u2019Anthony Melton \u2014 because the scale and slots they can offer the two would change depending on what happens with Kuminga.<\/p>\n
But in the shadow offseason, the Warriors have set up some things. They definitely have zeroed in on Horford, probably for most or all of the taxpayer midlevel exception of $5.7 million. They would love to add Melton, probably at a veteran\u2019s minimum. And though nobody inside or outside the Warriors\u2019 executive offices is predicting anything definitive about the Kuminga talks, I think there is some reasoned belief that the likeliest scenario is that Kuminga and the Warriors will eventually find a pathway to a two- or three-year deal to come back \u2014 and be set up for a trade either in the middle of next season or next offseason.<\/p>\n
If you plot it out like that, the Warriors\u2019 asterisk (pending Kuminga) moves will lead to this 12-man roster:<\/p>\n
Centers: *Horford, Quinten Post, Trayce Jackson-Davis.<\/p>\n
Forwards: Draymond Green, Jimmy Butler, *Kuminga, Moses Moody, Gui Santos.<\/p>\n
Guards: Stephen Curry, Brandin Podziemski, Buddy Hield, *Melton.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Toohey and Richard are likely slotted as two-way players to start the season.<\/p>\n
So that leaves the Warriors with 12 rostered players. The running number is actually probably 13 right now, because I think one of the rookies \u2014 Richard more likely than Toohey \u2014 could be ear-marked for a roster spot at some point during the season, when the Warriors will need to add a 14th player, per CBA rules.<\/p>\n
In this scenario, that would mean one open spot. That\u2019s it. <\/p>\n
And who could the Warriors be looking at? I\u2019ve heard rumbles about the return of Gary Payton II, who remains unsigned, obviously is beloved throughout the organization, and always is a fit to defend the opponent\u2019s most dangerous scorer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Warriors and Kuminga have known for months that, given his restricted-free-agent status, his full-force desire to become…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37537,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[2243,6422,355,99,3781,30534],"class_list":["post-37536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-golden-state-warriors","tag-jonathan-kuminga","tag-nba","tag-sports","tag-steph-curry","tag-steve-kerr"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37536\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}