Preview: Melton's emergence proving why Kuminga is so fungible

Santos out (ankle); but Curry (it hurts everywhere) is thankfully not on injury report

The Golden State Warriors are taking advantage of their extended home stand, and the wins they’ve been stringing together are starting to feel like the norm rather than an outlier. While their Bay Area football neighbors are gearing up for an honest to goodness must-win game, the bar for the Warriors is a bit lower these days, the measure of success much further out.

As the Sun sets on the day, both teams will start their games within a half hour of each other this evening, promising an entertaining (and hopefully good) feast of sportsball goodness. Don’t read too much into the Charlotte Hornet’s poor record, they’ve been much improved recently… and we’ve all watched this season’s Warriors squad blow games to worse teams.

On the injury front, the Warriors will be without Gui Santos, who has been reliable in his spot minutes. The injury to his ankle isn’t expected to be any sort of long-term issue, but the team hasn’t established any public timeline on his return. Interestingly, Steph Curry, who was banged up to the point of limping into his postgame press availability, does not appear on the injury report at all. Nothing questionable about that man!

Games like this are useful not because of the opponent, but because of what they quietly reveal. As Golden State keeps stacking wins at home, the absence of certain players becomes harder to ignore - not as a problem, but as a data point. And that’s where Jonathan Kuminga reenters the conversation.

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GAME DETAILS

WHO: Golden State Warriors (23-19) vs Charlotte Hornets (15-26)

WHEN: Saturday, January 17th, 2026; 5:30pm PST

WATCH: NBCSBA

(Niners game: 5pm on Fox)

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fun·gi·ble /ˈfənjəbəl/

adjective - (of a product or commodity) replaceable by another identical item; mutually interchangeable.

To understand why the Kuminga market has stalled - and why it may not unstick - you have to start with a word front offices rarely say out loud.It’s not really “the elephant in the room” because everyone is talking about it, and has been talking about it for quite some time, but recent reporting confirms what most watchers expected: Kuminga hasn’t really been injured. All these recent games this season - some of which could have certainly used another athletic wing option for Golden State - are being missed due to the intractable relationship between Kuminga and the Warriors.

After failing to identify a trade partner during the off-season, and then falling back into the same old pattern of spotty playing time, ineffective play while on court, and a long, long interpersonal history with each other, the Warriors and Kuminga are at the end of the rope. A trade now feels darn near mandatory. Which is odd for a player that just sits on the bench, doesn’t cause internal drama, and is reasonably productive on the basketball court.

The Warriors seemingly most likely trade target is Michael Porter jr., a player that is reportedly “a lock” to get moved prior to next month’s end of the in season trade window. But as the clock keeps ticking forward without movement, the volume of whispers is increasing. What if this team can’t find any reasonable return for their former lottery pick?

The core issue here is that Kuminga appears to be widely viewed as a fungible asset. Young, promising, but not on an especially great deal for where he’s at in his career, it appears to be more and more likely that there’s simply not much hunger for Kuminga in the trade market. This was clear after the fruitless trade attempts over the offseason, and has now crystalized into a sharp-edged reality. Golden State isn’t getting much back - not unless they throw in other meaningful assets.

Replaceability is the problem

It’s the Warriors own roster decisions that are cementing this. Players like De’Anthony Melton, and Brandin Podziemski are both proving to be valuable contributors - at a fraction of Kuminga’s salary commitment. The Warriors are face-to-face with what they’ve been calling a “market inefficiency” for a while now: while tall and athletic is a key feature to look for in developing players, that’s not necessarily how the Warriors and their coach assess value. Kuminga has been mostly replaced with the arrival of Butler, who just does everything better. But this is further complicated by how successful the smaller wings and primary ball handlers have been.

In other words, Golden State moved away from Kuminga because he was replaceable. Sure, he helps in a lot of ways, but when the coaching staff looks at the entire player package, it quickly becomes clear that De’Anthony Melton is better than Kuminga right now, despite the size gap.

Check out Melton’s overall profile compared to that of Kuminga (with special shout out to the DNHQ member that shared this site to me yesterday, check out CraftedNBA - it’s like stat muse, but actually good!). This is a spiderweb or radar chart, that measures a number of variables. It allows the information to show not just the scale (overall size of the shape’s coverage) but also the specific dimensions that go into it.

Now, sure, it’s stat nerd stuff; but this aligns with the eyeball test. Melton simply helps win games in more ways. Kuminga is shown with a slight edge in rebounding and playmaking, but huge deficiencies in other areas. Having a “slight edge” in those aspects of basketball while being a half foot taller and not coming into the season off a major knee surgery isn’t really all that much of a flex either, if we are being honest.

Which brings us back to this trade stalemate with Kuminga. The Warriors have a lot of sunk cost here, and Kuminga is certainly an interesting development project that can help right away. But at $22million, he’s the teams’ 4th highest-paid player, jumping up to $24mil next year on a team option before becoming a free agent? That’s not a very enticing prospect outside of salary dumping. On the court though, the Warriors’ ability to win without him is both a testament to some of the value bin players on the roster, as well as an indictment against Kuminga. Santos makes around $2mil this season; Will Richard (who initially bumped Kuminga from the rotation) makes just $1.2mil. Losing your spot in the team’s rotation happens, but looking at the salary of the players that have surpassed him, it’s clear that Kuminga’s trade value is going to be pretty low. Especially considering that it doesn’t appear as if any NBA team has much of an appetite to take a shot on Kuminga.

Of course, none of this determines the outcome of tonight’s game. The Warriors have already proven they can win without Kuminga, and in many ways that’s the most telling part of all of this. What could have been a season-long distraction has instead become background noise, a problem quietly managed rather than loudly endured. That, in itself, says something about where this team is.

But as the calendar keeps moving and the trade window narrows, the stakes sharpen. The longer Kuminga remains, the clearer the reality becomes: Golden State isn’t negotiating from a position of leverage, and hasn’t been for some time. Every additional win without him reinforces the same uncomfortable truth: that his value to this team (and the rest of the NBA) is theoretical, not practical.

The question now isn’t whether the Warriors misplayed the development arc. That answer has already arrived. The question is how disciplined they’ll be in closing the loop. At what point does chasing a marginal return do more harm than playing the hand through? Where is the line between salvaging value and manufacturing a move just to say one was made?

These are the quiet, unglamorous decisions that define the end of eras. Not the championships, not the parades - but the moments when a front office has to admit what a player is, what he isn’t, and what the market will (or won’t) pay for the difference. The Warriors are there now. Whether they act, wait, or walk away will tell us a lot about how clearly they still see themselves.

Prediction

Warriors win, Niners win, and I somehow manage to make it to that punk show by 8pm.

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