Jonathan Kuminga Is In Basketball Purgatory

It's hard to pinpoint the moment that Jonathan Kuminga first became disenchanted with the Golden State Warriors and their management, so we will have to start the clock with the trade demand that sparked the latest stage in their preposterous standoff. By that reckoning this is merely Day Two of Kuminga Held Hostage, and yes, it's already stupid.

But we all knew it would be. When a trade period begins with no trade, no predictions of a trade, and the advertised likelihood that no trade may happen until the summer, you've got something special. And by special we mean staggeringly tedious.

Kuminga and the Warriors have been a mismatched set almost since the day he was drafted. That was five years ago, and the only thing that has actually been accomplished over the course of that relationship is that Kuminga has four years into his pension. He was a central part of the team's two-track plan to introduce a wave of young players who would allow them to stay at contender level after Stephen Curry ascends into heaven/fades into retirement; the other cornerstones of that gambit were James Wiseman and Moses Moody, which is why that plan died in the dirt. The Warriors have only succeeded in getting three years older, Wiseman has already been traded twice and has had health issues throughout his career, and Moody has slowly become a reliable 24-minutes-per-game guy, for what that may be worth. Curry, for his part, remains every bit the Stephen Curry he was when the succession plan was first devised.