Everyone’s role on the Golden State Warriors has been clarified following the blockbuster Jimmy Butler trade. And while there were some question marks about how rising young star Jonathan Kuminga would fit into the Dub’s recently solved jigsaw puzzle by the fourth quarter of the Warriors’ 130-104 rout of the Sacramento Kings, that question mark seems to be answered.
It helps when said 6-foot-8 forward is hammering home a double-clutch dunk along the baseline en route to a productive 18-point game on seven of 10 FGs.
KUMINGA WITH AN INCREDIBLE SLAM
pic.twitter.com/BwQXpphnYj
— NBA on TNT (@NBAonTNT) March 14, 2025
Earlier this week on 95.7 The Game, Steve Kerr talked about how Kuminga will have work off the ball more following the addition of Butler. In his press conference after the game, Kuminga expressed how Butler made that adjustment seamless for him against the Kings when asked how the 6-time all-star affected his play.
“Just having Jimmy and the way everyone’s playing, he makes everybody’s life easier,” Kuminga said. “The game just slowed down. The more it slowed down, the more there was open space to get easy things.”
Kuminga took advantage of Sacramento selling out to prevent Stephen Curry from reaching his 4,000th made 3-pointer.
A night of celebration for Jonathan Kuminga
Donning a new-look headband for his return, the 22-year-old sliced Sacramento up with his back-cuts to the rim and ran the floor well on the fastbreak, drawing multiple trips to the free throw line and even setting Curry up for his 3,999th three. With some solid perimeter defense on Sac’s guards, Kuminga had a best-case scenario first game back from injury
Post-game, Kerr expressed his happiness for Kuminga after he missed 31 straight games with a severe ankle sprain.
“I thought Jonathan [Kuminga] was really good tonight. I was just happy for him,” Kerr said. “What you notice is the different dimension he gives us with his explosion to the rim… He’s put a lot of work in. It was a bad ankle injury. Worse than we originally thought. It just took him quite a while to get to this point. There was a lot of hard work that went into [returning] and I’m proud of him.”
It was a joyful night all around for Kuminga, who was visibly beaming following his double-clutch dunk. In his press conference after the game, he revealed why he was so happy in that moment.
“I think that was the moment I realized I was out there with the crew,” Kuminga explained.
“Two timelines” and a Warriors team together
For all the talk about Kuminga potentially disrupting the “crew’s” mojo, the Warriors might have had the most put-together collective effort all season.
With eight players in double figures scoring, the Warriors shot an efficient 57.7% from the field. It was their second-best shooting performance of the season, behind only their win over the Philadelphia 76ers two months ago. However, they were able to tie their season-high 3-point percentage from that same 76ers game, shooting 56.4% from beyond the arc with 22 made threes.
Sacramento gave Golden State a scare toward the end of the second quarter. A 12-1 Kings run cut the Warriors’ big lead down to 10 points going into halftime. But thanks to Kuminga’s 13 second-half points alongside four big Moses Moody 3-pointers, the Dubs fended off a Kings comeback, winning comfortably by 26 points.
The seventh and 14th picks respectively from the 2021 NBA Draft came up big for the Warriors. If they continue playing the best basketball of their young careers, it may force people to revisit the currently declared dead “two timelines” blueprint.
But it is too soon to reevaluate the “two timelines” plan. The Dubs are only one game into the Kuminga reintegration process. But if there’s one thing that is for certain, it is that Kuminga’s headband is here to stay, as he stated in the same postgame interview.
“In life, you always gotta try new things. I felt good wearing the headband, so I think I’m gonna keep wearing it for a little bit until something doesn’t go my way.”
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