Anthony Slater and Aaron Turner (Kuminga's agent) is on today's (Sep 19th) Hoop Collective with Brian Windhorst.
The big point is that other teams are willing to let Kuminga play his game whereas in Golden State he'll have to limit his game as they try to win another championship. (Odd that he's willing to do that now but last season when he came back while GS was trying to move up in the standings, he didn't do that). Turner said he's had to educate Kuminga on GS's situation with money and aprons, but the agent says they "like" J.Johnsons and J.Green's deal numbers and if they're taking less money in season 1 then they got, they want the player option.
Turner brings up Kerr wanting Kuminga to have a player arc more like S.Marion or A.Gordon and the agent doesn't agree he's like them and Turner doesn't agree, he thinks he's different.
Interesting... Anthony Slater had to stop Aaron Turner's negatives of Kuminga rant around the 22 minute mark in the youtube video.
The agent started going down the rabbit hole of taking shots he shouldn't take and playing with Steph and how they need him to flourish in the role of looking for Steph first... then he said it JK is 22 and would think I can get downhill right way <Slater interrupts>.To me, this looks like Aaron Turner's being an agent and this is his big last push to get fans to help put pressure on GS by going public. Personally, I think GS has already caved too much already (and the agent wants them to cave even more) and like I mentioned, Kuminga has had his chance to help the team by playing a role and didn't last season (which the agent was addressing before Slater interrupted him), but it'll be different this year if he's given a PO... nah. He wants the contract and then they'll figure out how to get him where he wants, the PO will help him pick where he's going and also limit GS's return in a trade since he can become a FA 1 1/2 seasons once he gets to his new team. Who's throwing a decent amount of assets at Kuminga to basically advertise him for the rest of the league?
I'd expect the agent will try to not go down the negative's rabbit hole when doing public talks with Kuminga in the near future.
Windhorst tries to help afterwards saying if I were the warriors I'd try to squeeze you too (indicating Kuminga is worth more?).
This is how you screw up a maximizing a season, even if Kuminga does give it the old college try of playing how Kerr wants (which I'm not sure he'll even try to play that way), I'd expect frustration will happen for him very quickly and go to how he wants to play, have a sizable contract backing him up and then Kerr, the FO and Lacob will all have different ways of handling this situation and this will be a problem for a team trying to maximize this year and possibly next year's team. If he plays and plays his way he screws up the offense, if he doesn't play the FO and Lacob will say you're dropping his trade value.
Had Kuminga came back after his injury, saw the team was doing well and wanted to contribute to winning he would have played the role Kerr wanted him to, gotten more minutes, made GS a better team and probably got him the contract he wanted from GS (and then could have pushed to be traded if he wanted). Instead, he came back, looked to play the game he wanted to play and now it's a huge mess. He could have been a key contributor last season but wasn't... and now a PO will get him to change how he's playing for the next 2 possibly 3 years... that's highly doubtful in my opinion, he had his chance and didn't take it but his agent (not Kuminga) promises it'll be different if given a PO....
