The Kuminga Konclusion: Understanding the aftermath of a prolonged saga
Months of inaction followed by flurries of transactions
A painstakingly monotonous and cumbersome off-season reached a cathartic climax this week for Warriors fans as the Kuminga contract saga finally came to a close. After months of negotiations, both sides reached an agreement on a deal that was essentially what the Warriors had been offering since the beginning of the summer (albeit with some minor adjustments we’ll get into).
No dramatic soap opera exit on the ever-threatening qualifying offer.
No long-term, relationship-committing multi-year deal.
Just the 1+1 offer to keep the marriage of circumstance in an uncomfortable, tense limbo for a little while longer.
Along with the sorting of the Kuminga situation, the Warriors also mostly completed a bunch of other notable and minor transactions in the last couple of days, all in all, cycling in about 14 players through the organization in some capacity.
As the training camp roster gets nailed down ahead of pre-season and the Dubs finally start their on-court prep work for the season, allow me to break down what went down and what it means for the future.
Once the Warriors finalize all of their reported deals, they will enter training camp with a full 21-man roster ahead of preseason, consisting of 14 standard deals, 3 two-ways, and 4 camp deals.
Let’s take a look at all those deals below.
Jonathan Kuminga
Contract: 2yr/$46.8M (+15% Trade Bonus)
2025/26 | $22,500,000
2026/27 | $24,300,000 (Team Option)
2027 | Unrestricted FA (Bird)
After months of tedious, repetitive negotiations with multiple offers and frameworks floated around and a multitude of intricate rules and logistics dictating potential outcomes (specifically with sign-and-trade scenarios), the most likely conclusion is where we eventually arrived.
Kuminga returns to the Warriors on a shorter and less lucrative deal than he probably would’ve liked. The qualifying offer they wielded as a threat amounted to nothing more than the leverage play it always was to increase the Warriors’ initial offer by $1.7M along with a trade bonus that could tack on an additional $1.3M-$1.7M. Getting the maximum total value of the deal up to as high as $48.5M.
While Kuminga’s side could’ve opted to take the 2+1 deal at a slightly higher AAV that the Warriors offered earlier this month (and reportedly would’ve taken if the 3rd year was a player option), instead opted to take the shorter deal to try to reach free agency sooner.
The new interesting angle in this deal, which caused a bit of confusion at first with how it was reported, is the 15% trade bonus (synonymously called a trade kicker).
This is something that a player only receives if he is actually traded, and is something that the team trading away the player is the one that is on the hook for. Meaning if the Warriors were to trade Kuminga, while his salary would come off the books and be replaced by the incoming salary they receive in that trade, that trade bonus would still count against their cap sheet for that season.
The bonus itself is 15% of the remaining value of the contract (not including option years). So it would be just 15% of Kuminga’s salary for this season at the time of the trade.
To give an example, Kuminga’s trade restriction lifts on January 15th. If traded on that exact day, the value of his contract at that point in the season would be $11,508,621. So the bonus would be 15% of that, or $1.73M. This is how the somewhat misleading $48.5M figure that was reported came about (agencies generally urge to have deals framed with the maximum value they could achieve to reflect better for their clients).
If traded at the trade deadline on February 5th, the bonus would be worth about $1.3M.
Another important thing to keep in mind with the bonus is that it is not counted as outgoing salary in a trade, but is counted as incoming salary. So if the Warriors trade Kuminga on deadline day, his outgoing salary is $22.5M, but his incoming salary is $23.8M. Something quite reminiscent of our riveting discussions months ago about the effects of Base Year Compensation in sign-and-trades. This is essentially like a mini-version of it.
Where slight complications could arise is with trading with other second apron teams, who, like the Warriors, are not allowed to take back more than 100% of what they send out in a trade. It would all but require the use of a third team, unless of course Kuminga were to waive his bonus (unlikely, but something he may accommodate if the choice of destination is favorable).
Additionally, the Dubs still have to account for the hard cap that they are $2M below, since, along with any salary they take back in a trade, they also need enough room to fit Kuminga’s bonus into that space.
As of now, that wouldn’t be an issue since his bonus, regardless of when traded, will be less than $2M, but could become complicated if they decide to add more salary by going through with the signing of Seth Curry, as I’ll discuss below.
Al Horford
Contract: 2yr/$11.6M (TMLE)
2025/26 | $5,685,000
2026/27 | $5,969,250 (Player Option)
2027 | Unrestricted FA (Early Bird)
As anticipated, the Warriors use their Taxpayer Mid-Level Exception to bring in Horford as their starting center. They gave him a player option on the second year, allowing him the choice as to whether or not he will return for his age-40 season.
As a result of this transaction, the Warriors are now hard-capped at the 2nd Apron for the rest of the season, meaning that their total team salary cannot surpass $207.8M at any point during the season. With 14 players under contract, they currently sit just $2M shy of that.
De’Anthony Melton
Contract: 2yr/$6.5M (Minimum)
2025/26 | $3,080,921
2026/27 | $3,451,779 (Player Option)
2027 | Unrestricted FA (Early Bird)
Fan favorite Melton returns for a second year with the Warriors and, somewhat surprisingly, was able to obtain a second-year player option on this deal, giving him some security heading into the following off-season.
Because of that second year, he will no longer count at the subsidized two years of service veteran minimum level of $2.3M for cap purposes, and his actual salary will be used instead. That’s $800k more on the books this year for the Warriors.
Gary Payton II
Contract: 1yr/$3.3M (Minimum)
2025/26 | $3,303,774
2026 | Unrestricted FA (Bird)
To mitigate the loss of Kevon Looney, the Warriors retained one of their stalwarts in GP2 on a market value deal at his minimum salary. Because he signed for only one year, the NBA will subsidize his contract, and he will only count on the books at $2.3M for the Warriors (unlike Melton above).
It is worth noting that because Payton was a free agent with full bird rights who re-signed on a one-year deal, he is entitled to an implicit No Trade Clause. This is granted because in the event that he were to be traded this season, he would be stripped of his bird rights, which would then impact the type of contract he could seek in free agency from his new team.
So far there has been no confirmation as to whether or not he chose to retain his NTC or waive it. It would be somewhat humorous if he kept it since the Warriors required Kuminga to waive his as a part of his deal.
Will Richard
Contract: 4yr/$8.7M (SRPE)
2025/26 | $1,272,870
2026/27 | $2,150,918
2027/28 | $2,525,902
2028/29 | $2,735,698
2029 | Unrestricted FA (Bird)
There was some speculation through the summer as to whether Richard would find himself on the main roster or as a two-way given the Kuminga situation, but the Warriors eventually decided to prioritize locking him on a long-term deal (over making someone like Seth Curry a priority).
They could’ve gone the route they did last year with Quinten Post, who they initially signed on a two-way before converting him to the main roster, but by doing so, they forgo the chance to sign him a multi-year deal through the Second Round Pick Exception. Instead, the Warriors were limited to offering Post only two years through the Minimum Exception, which will allow him to test restricted free agency next summer, quite early into his career. This is something they preferred to avoid repeating with Richard and instead utilized the SRPE to give him a cost-controlled four-year deal with team control on the last two seasons.
Seth Curry
Contract: Training Camp Deal
2025/26 | Exhibit 9 (Injury Protection)
The last big roster domino to fall before we can shift all of our attention to obsessing over trade deadline targets is what becomes of Wardell’s younger brother, who currently finds himself the odd man out in the Warriors’ roster plans.
After all of their other roster moves, the Warriors found themselves a couple of hundred thousand short of being able to lock in Curry to their final 15th roster spot. Curry’s vet minimum valued at $3.6M would only count at $2.3M on their cap sheet if signed on a one-year deal (same as GP2 above), but that’s still around $300k more than the space they have below the hard cap that they can’t surpass.
This is why they decided to bring him in on a training camp deal with an Exhibit 91, so he can at least get acclimated with the team by practicing and playing in pre-season games, but they will have to waive him before the regular season.
But a reunion would be on the cards, and they would be able to re-sign him as early as November 12th, when his minimum salary would prorate down to $2,019,138, leaving them with a couple of hundred dollars of space under the hard cap. In the process, Curry would unfortunately lose out on about $440k and 12 games of action.
However, the impact of Kuminga’s trade bonus is a factor here as discussed above, and may impact the timing of when the Warriors might look to bring in Seth. The longer the wait the more money they save and the more flexibility they gain with executing trades below their hard cap. How long is Seth willing to wait? Maybe a tree planting sponsorship could ease his worries.
Two-Ways and Departing FAs
To round out the roster, along with incumbent Jackson Rowe, the Warriors signed rookie Alex Toohey and brought back Pat Spencer to fill out their two-way spots. All three will enter restricted free agency next offseason. Toohey can return on a two-way. The other two will have partially guaranteed minimum deals as their qualifying offers.
Restricted free agent, Taran Armstrong, who was set to occupy a two-way spot, is now in advanced talks to join Serbian side KK Partizan.
Among the Warriors’ other departing free agents: Kevon Looney famously left for New Orleans, Braxton Key joined the Memphis Grizzlies for training camp, and Kevin Knox II remains unsigned. Knox shares an agent with Kuminga.
Exhibit 10s
As they look to lay the groundwork for building out this season’s iteration of the Santa Cruz Warriors, GSW cycled through some Exhibit 10 players during media day.
They signed-and-waived Ja’Vier Francis, Chance McMillian, and Jacksen Moni. All three will join Santa Cruz as affiliate players.
Currently rostered, they have Marques Bolden, LJ Cryer, and Taveion Kinsey. While those three might stick through pre-season as camp bodies, they’ll be joining the other three in Santa Cruz; Cryer as an affiliate, the other two as returning rights players.
Coleman Hawkins, who was expected to join Santa Cruz, is now heading to the Denver Nuggets. Like Knox, he is also an Aaron Turner client.
Santa Cruz will have 4 roster spots left to fill out after adding these six Exhibit 10s.
Future Outlook
The Warriors this summer made a concerted effort to stick to mostly 1-2 year deals as they firmed up a two-year window of contention around Steph Curry while planning for a post-Steph era starting in 2027 with only 3 players on the books in Moody, Hield, and Richard.
Pending a larger trade, they should see plenty of roster continuity heading into next season if everyone picks up their options. Outside of Santos, Post, and the two-ways who will all enter restricted free agency, only Payton II and Seth Curry (after he signs for real) are pegged to be out of contract next offseason.
The Warriors came into this summer with a clear plan for what they wanted the roster to look like this year and beyond, and while it got a bit tense at times, they were ultimately able to accomplish pretty much exactly what they wanted to do.
A credit to Dunleavy and his staff, who continue to impress with their foresight and decisiveness.
An Exhibit 9 is an attachment to a non-guaranteed minimum salary training camp deal. The attachment protects the team in case the player were to get injured during camp. They can waive the injured player only having to pay out $15k. Without the E9, the player would be paid the daily rate of their minimum salary for each day of the regular season they miss through injury. So a player suffering a season-ending injury, even if waived before the regular season, would still be on the team’s books for their full salary. This happened to the Houston Rockets in 2020 with camp invite Chris Clemons who did not have an E9 in his deal. This is why pretty much every single camp invite has one, even if not expressly reported.