Wake up, trade season's open!
Preview: Warriors host Knicks but everyone's waiting for a Kuminga move
The Golden State Warriors finally managed to beat the Portland Trail Blazers on Tuesday, narrowly avoiding the dreaded in-season sweep. Sure, those losses don’t each mean more than any other game, but it does send a message.1 The way the Warriors won that last game - big performances from the secondary players alongside huge games off the bench - was exactly the sort of gutsy victory that the Warriors have been craving all season.
It’s an exciting time to be a fan of this team, as the white-knuckled ride to the end of Stephen Curry’s career continues to entertain and the certainty melts away, fans are left to savior the last few sips from the chalice. As of today, the trade window is open for the Warriors to find a trade partner to move Jonathan Kuminga; it’s a short window due to the abbreviated trade season which closes on February 5th.
Heads up that the NBA has seemingly uncovered another way to make these games tricky to watch. After randomly starting the last game a half hour late, this one appears to be slated to air on Amazon Prime. I miss the simplicity of cable.
GAME DETAILS
WHO: Golden State Warriors () vs. New York Knicks (25-15)
WHEN: Thursday, January 15th, 2026; 7pm PST
WATCH: Amazon Prime ←weird channel alert!
Strap in, nobody knows what happens next
Tonight, Golden State will welcome in the New York Knicks, who will be coming down from Sacramento on the tail end of a back-to-back. Jalen Brunsen and the Knicks are an extremely solid team. Currently holding on to second place in the Eastern Conference standings, they just got standout wing, Josh Hart back; so the Warriors are going to have their hands full this evening.
In front of all of this, all eyes will be fixated on the newly opened trade window for Jonathan Kuminga. After being glued to the bench and clearly on an imposed hiatus it’s widely assumed that the Warriors absolutely must move their former lottery pick - which isn’t exactly helping their trade market value (which was already palpably thin).
As always, the rumor mill is in high gear, and it doesn’t seem that there’s any sort of consensus emerging. He’s already traded, or maybe will not be moved, or perhaps there’s some huge multi-team trade being built across multiple organizations…
And that’s really the crux of it. The Jonathan Kuminga trade chatter isn’t just about asset management or rotation math - it’s the final, unavoidable reckoning with the Warriors’ attempt to outrun time. The two-timelines plan was never foolish; it was ambitious, even arrogant in the way only dynasties can afford to be. Golden State tried to honor the present without surrendering the future, to keep winning now while quietly building what came next. For a while, it even looked plausible. But basketball has a way of forcing honesty. Development needs patience. Contention demands urgency. Eventually, those forces collide.
If Kuminga is moved, it won’t mark a failure so much as an admission: this era belongs wholly to Stephen Curry, and every remaining decision must serve that truth. The dynasty was built on ruthless clarity - once upon a time, the Warriors chose Steph over Monta, chose pace and shooting over convention, chose risk over comfort. This moment feels like a quieter echo of that same instinct. Not as dramatic, not as romantic, but just as defining. You don’t get to extend greatness by hedging. You extend it by committing.
So here they are again, standing at the edge of something uncertain, squeezing whatever is left from a window that has already given more than anyone had a right to expect. The wins still matter. The trades matter. The nights, like this one against the Knicks, still matter. Because even as the future narrows, the present remains vivid; and worth chasing. Strap in, indeed. The Warriors have been here before. They just haven’t felt time breathing down their necks quite like this.
At this point, the debate isn’t if the Warriors trade Jonathan Kuminga; it’s what they refuse to accept in return. That’s the real tension now, and it’s the line that will define how this front office is judged in the post-dynasty autopsy. Every team “wins” a trade in the press release. The question is where Golden State draws its line in private. Because there is a version of this deal that helps the Warriors, and there is a version that merely ends the discomfort. Honestly? At this point I think most fans will accept either outcome.
A marginal rotation piece, a fungible contract, or theoretical flexibility might quiet the noise, but it doesn’t meaningfully serve the last act of the Stephen Curry era. The walk-away price can’t be about optics or asset recycling - it has to be about whether the return changes this season’s ceiling, even at the margins. If it doesn’t, there’s a real argument that patience, awkward as it may be, is still preferable.
And this is where fans should lean in, not out. Every great Warriors decision of the last decade involved a ruthless definition of value: what mattered, what didn’t, and what they were willing to live without. The Kuminga trade will be no different. Whatever the return ends up being, the louder story will be what Golden State decided wasn’t enough - and whether that line was drawn with conviction, or fear.
Because in the end, this isn’t about maximizing a young player’s trade value. It’s about respecting the final years of a dynasty by refusing to cash them in cheaply. So what’s the number? What’s the player, the pick, or the principle that makes the Warriors say yes - and just as importantly, what should make them walk away?
Prediction
Warriors win, of course, and I’ll go out on a limb here and say that the Warriors do not have something already set up within the trade market, so no Kuminga trade today.
Music… mini Friday
It’s been too long since a preview has landed on a Friday, and I guess I’m just itchy to share something. Or perhaps it is time to celebrate what me and my family love to refer to as “mini Friday” as this fine Thursday rolls through and the days are beginning to grow longer.
Notable, in-season “sent a message” sweeps may or may not matter in the post season, but why risk it in a game built on player confidence?