{"id":733678,"date":"2026-06-29T22:37:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T22:37:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/733678\/"},"modified":"2026-06-29T22:37:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T22:37:09","slug":"hawks-to-make-jonathan-kuminga-free-agent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/733678\/","title":{"rendered":"Hawks To Make Jonathan Kuminga Free Agent"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Hawks won\u2019t exercise their $24.3MM team option on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/k\/kuminjo01.html?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.hoopsrumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2026-06-29_bbr\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Jonathan Kuminga<\/a> for the 2026\/27 season, reports NBA insider Chris Haynes (<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/ChrisBHaynes\/status\/2071694194079633852\" rel=\"nofollow\">Twitter link<\/a>). As a result, Kuminga will become an unrestricted free agent.<\/p>\n<p><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Jonathan-Kuminga-Hawks-200x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"300\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-473734\"  \/>Kuminga, 23, spent about three months in restricted free agency in 2025 before finally agreeing to a two-year deal with the Warriors that included a second-year team option and was seemingly designed to make him an in-season trade chip. Sure enough, Golden State sent out Kuminga ahead of February\u2019s deadline, packaging him and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/h\/hieldbu01.html?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.hoopsrumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2026-06-29_bbr\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Buddy Hield<\/a> to Atlanta in exchange for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/p\/porzikr01.html?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.hoopsrumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2026-06-29_bbr\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Kristaps Porzingis<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>After an up-and-down tenure with the Warriors that included flashes of stardom and long stretches in and out of the rotation, Kuminga appeared in 16 games for Atlanta down the stretch, averaging 12.3 points, 5.3 rebounds, and 2.1 assists in 22.1 minutes per game, with a shooting line of .476\/.346\/.702. His minutes climbed to 26.0 MPG in the team\u2019s playoff series vs. New York.<\/p>\n<p>Declining Kuminga\u2019s option doesn\u2019t necessarily mean the Hawks will part ways with him, since they still control his <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hoopsrumors.com\/2026\/04\/hoops-rumors-glossary-non-bird-rights-9.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Non-Bird rights<\/a>. However, it gives the team a little more spending flexibility entering free agency. As ESPN\u2019s Bobby Marks notes (<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/BobbyMarks42\/status\/2071695724224610361\" rel=\"nofollow\">via Twitter<\/a>), Atlanta will now have access to the full non-taxpayer mid-level exception and projects to be about $27MM below the luxury tax line.<\/p>\n<p>According to Brad Rowland of Locked on Hawks (<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/BTRowland\/status\/2071695542296379643\" rel=\"nofollow\">Twitter link<\/a>), the Hawks engaged in discussions with multiple teams about Kuminga trade scenarios before Monday\u2019s option deadline, but none of those options was compelling enough to pick up his option and move forward on.<\/p>\n<p>While Kuminga will return to free agency just nine months after wrapping up his prolonged RFA saga, the fact that he\u2019s unrestricted this time around will give him more leverage to choose his next opportunity.<\/p>\n<p>The Kings, who pursued a sign-and-trade for him last summer, are expected to have interest again, <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/MarcJSpears\/status\/2071705461313675505\" rel=\"nofollow\">tweets<\/a> Marc J. Spears of Andscape, though Sacramento still has some cap issues to figure out before being in position to make an offer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Hawks won\u2019t exercise their $24.3MM team option on Jonathan Kuminga for the 2026\/27 season, reports NBA insider&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":733679,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[6422,99],"class_list":["post-733678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-jonathan-kuminga","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733678","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=733678"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733678\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/733679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=733678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=733678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=733678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}