Transcript: Bobby Marks on the Warriors off-season and Kuminga's future

he's no Perks, but he summarizes nicely for a broad audience

May 19, 2025

Addressing needs and trade limitations

I don’t expect seismic changes in Golden State. I don’t see them going out and all of a sudden trying to get Kevin Durant or Giannis — or a player like that — because of two reasons:

(1) When you made the Butler trade, you basically eliminated most of your outgoing salary that you can include in a trade. There’s no $26 million player anymore — unless you want to include Draymond Green into the mix. You traded Wiggins. You traded Melton, who’s going to be a free agent. You traded Schröder, who’s going to be a free agent.

When you want to go out and get a $50 million player, you’ve got to basically send out like $43 million. There’s not enough salary to cobble together to go out and do that.

(2) You do have the draft equity to be in play. You have basically four first-round picks you can trade: 2026, 2028, 2030 (if it’s 1–20 protected), and 2032.

So you do have the equity in draft picks to go out and be a player if you want to do that.

It’s just hard for me to say. Last year we talked about Lauri Markkanen. This year, I’m sure Giannis is going to be talked about. I just don’t see you having enough things — unless, of course, you want to put Draymond in play — to be able to do something like that.

Jonathan Kuminga’s future

Figuring out the path or direction of Jonathan Kuminga is going to be one of the more intriguing storylines this offseason — based on potential, based on him being an afterthought for most of this season, based on what we saw in this Minnesota series where he basically kind of came to life.

There is still that untapped potential. Before the Minnesota series, you could have said, “Hey, you might be better off just trying to explore sign-and-trades.”

What’s your walk away number with Kuminga?

He’s got a $7.9 million qualifying offer. I know it’s been reported that it’s $10.1 — it’s not $10.1, it’s $7.9 because he didn’t reach starter criteria in Golden State. So they’re going to tender him a qualifying offer by June 29th. He will get that offer. That will make him a restricted free agent.

Now the question is: what’s going to be the cost to keep Kuminga?

There’s only one team out there — which is the Brooklyn Nets — that can go out and make a significant offer sheet on Jonathan Kuminga. Listen, Brooklyn has been known — they did it in the past — of basically putting down a whopper sheet of offer sheets. They did it with Tyler Johnson. They did it with Otto Porter, going back. They did it with Allen Crabbe.

The danger of doing offer sheets is when a team elects not to match. So if Brooklyn came in and said, “We’re going to do three years, $90 million for Jonathan Kuminga,” and Golden State says, “Fine, we’re not going to do that,” then you’re basically stuck with that contract. So there is a danger to putting down offer sheets.

Golden State’s approach to Kuminga

I think where Golden State is — I think you let him test the market. Listen, if he wants to go sign an offer sheet, then that’s kind of the risk you play.

I do think the number for Kuminga is probably — I still think he’s an $18 to $20 million guy. I know the cap’s going up, and I know where you are financially. If you want to go up to $22 to $23, fine — based on potential alone. I’m still wary as far as committing long-term.

I know the owner loves him — I’ve read it, certainly in the Athletic piece.But I do think you are a little bit in danger if you’re going more — because you’re $17.5 million below the luxury tax. The luxury tax is not as important as it once was — the aprons are. They’re $25.5 million below the first, and $37 million below the second apron. So you do have the flexibility to go out and sign him to a $22 million contract and still have a workable solution to try to stay under that first apron.

How the Kuminga decision affects exceptions and sign-and-trades

The Kuminga decision plays a significant role in what exceptions you have in the offseason.

For example, if you sign Kuminga to a $20 million salary, then you have the $5.7 million taxpayer mid-level exception to sign a free agent.

If you let him walk — if you just say, “You know what, Jonathan Kuminga, we’re going to let you walk,” then you have the $14.1 million non-taxpayer mid-level exception.

There is also the scenario — of course this will be brought up — of sign-and-trades. When you trade out a player in a sign-and-trade, it does not trigger the hard cap. When you acquire a player in a sign-and-trade, that triggers the first apron hard cap.

Sign-and-trades are certainly tricky, because depending on what’s coming back, if you’re taking back more money, that can trigger the first or second apron.

Let’s say you can’t get a deal done with Kuminga and there’s a team out there that says,“You know what, we really like Jonathan Kuminga at $25 million, $30 million” — then you can work out a sign-and-trade.

However, remember: the salary coming back now basically puts you over either the first or second apron. There’s a lot of technicality to that. Probably when we get closer to free agency, we can dive deeper.

There’s also this: the first year of Kuminga’s salary, say it’s $30 million — for trade purposes, that doesn’t count as outgoing salary. It’s basically 50% of that. So if it’s $30 million, you can only send out $15 million in value, which means you can only bring back maybe a $22 to $23 million player.

So there are some complexities to doing a Jonathan Kuminga sign-and-trade.