Warrriors turned down Kuminga deal for veteran forward

A recent report provided some clarity on the Golden State Warriors’ endless negotiations with restricted free agent Jonathan Kuminga, who is either a future All-Star held back by his wicked head coach or a player who wildly overrates his own talent, while the Warriors are either insulting low-balling their young forward or prudently protecting their trade options. One thing they aren’t doing is trading Kuminga to the Phoenix Suns.

During Kuminga’s long restricted free agent saga, the Warriors haven’t received a sign-and-trade offer that they like — not that it seems like many arrived. Shams Charania and Anthony Slater cite two that the Warriors turned down: One that would send Kuminga to the Sacramento Kings in exchange for Malik Monk and a highly-protected first-round pick, and another that would route Kuminga to the Phoenix Suns for veteran forward Royce O’Neale and second-round picks, since the Suns are so low on draft capital that they’ve had to trade picks swaps of pick swaps.

But assuming they’d been interested in O’Neale, what would he have provided? His salary for 2025-26 is $10.125M, which should have allowed the Warriors to avoid the base-year compensation issues that complicated any deals involving restricted free agents.

The simplified explanation for this is that Kuminga’s salary in a sign-and-trade deal counts at only 50% of its value as outgoing salary for the Warriors, but counts as the full amount for the receiving team. Kuminga’s offer with the Suns was worth four years and somewhere in the $80-88M range. Marc J. Spears reported in July that the Suns trade would send center Nick Richards to the Warriors, along with four second-rounders.

Richards is making $5M next season in the last year of his deal and will be backing up center Mark Williams, which he also did as a Charlotte Hornet. O’Neale has three years left on his contract for $32.6M, not all that attractive of a deal since he’ll be 35 years old at the end of it. It makes all kinds of sense that Kuminga would want to go to Phoenix and start at their vacant power forward position, but the Suns just don’t have much they can trade.

How would O’Neale fit as a Warrior? O’Neale’s role is as a three-and-D forward who can stretch the floor and play both forward positions. He made 40.6% of his three-pointers last season on a healthy volume of 5.9 attempts per game. For his career, O’Neale has made 1.5 threes per game at a 38.5% clip — pretty solid! O’Neale was one of the best defenders on the Suns last year but that’s not a huge accomplishment on the NBA’s fourth-worst defense in terms of defensive rating.

Unfortunately, three-point shooting is most of what O’Neale does on the offensive end. He took 77.3% of his shots from three-point range and 96% of those were assisted. He did shoot an impressive 52.9% on corner threes last season. O’ Neale doesn’t particularly move and cut on offense, with only 20% of his shots coming within 10 feet of the basket and racking up a mere three dunks in 75 games.

If the Warriors were getting the Royce O’Neale from five years ago, when his defense was elite, this may have been an attractive offer. But the Suns essentially wanted to salary-dump O’Neale and get Jonathan Kuminga as the reward, with the only sweetener being a pu-pu platter of second-round picks.

The Warriors can and should do better in a Kuminga trade, especially if they stop insisting on a team option and just sign him. As far as this rumored deal is concerned, it’s interesting — but not surprising that the Warriors shut it down.

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