The Jonathan Kuminga Saga Swings Towards Tragicomedy

Drama is where you make it, and in how willing you are to inflate a story past the outer limits of its molecular structure. Take the groundbreaking Curt Cignetti Chipotle story as an example: A series of blogs and memes and sports talk radio segments have been launched around a bland meal, ordered daily from a familiar food chain by someone who happened to win a championship. It is a perfectly reasonable if obviously silly thing, and so obviously not worth caring about that it almost comes around the other side and becomes interesting for how uninteresting it is. There's no reason not to expend some words on it, and also no real reason to do so. Monomaniacs who eat the same thing every day tend to worry their families and friends until something good happens to them, but when that good thing happens, you've got content. As opposed to, say, a worthwhile food review.

And then there is Jonathan Kuminga's ongoing saga with and against the Golden State Warriors, which we have already hashed and rehashed until it looks like the Cignetti meal. After being consigned to first hell and then purgatory, Kuminga is now taking us on a trip through postmodernist comedy.

To review: Kuminga, formerly the future of the franchise a la James Wiseman and Moses Moody, has repeatedly asked for and eventually demanded a trade because he believes the Warriors have deliberately stunted his career. The Warriors say Kuminga is hard to trade because the demand for him by other teams is too modest. He wound up deep into Steve Kerr's doghouse, to the point where the end of the Warriors bench was rezoned commercial so that it could legally include a kennel. Then Jimmy Butler sustained a season-ending injury, and Kuminga was grudgingly returned to the rotation. He scored 20 points in 21 minutes in a loss to Toronto, and then three days later scored 10 in nine minutes in a loss at Dallas. You can see a pattern of decently efficient scoring developing there, and possibly the beginning of a market for a player who didn't previously have one.