The Warriors’ motto is “Strength in Numbers.”
But where are the numbers?
The Warriors are supposed to have a full roster, ready to go for training camp, which starts next Tuesday.
Instead, less than a month away from their first regular-season game, they still have six open roster spots.
They’re not looking very strong.
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This isn’t normal. No, this is a dereliction of duty by the front office to not find a resolution in the Jonathan Kuminga contract negotiations.
No competent front office would be stuck in this kind of a stalemate for six months.
You can blame the fifth-year forward for this problem, too. It takes two parties to make a deal, and Kuminga’s contract demands are straight out of fantasy land.
So these two sides have been staring at each other, talking trash in public, and they seem no closer to a solution.
The roster is threadbare as a result.
Now, I’m told there are “verbal agreements” with guys like Al Horford, De’Anthony Melton, and Gary Payton II. They’re reportedly adding Seth Curry, too. And they have their second-round pick, Will Richard. Add in Kuminga and there’s your full roster.
But a “verbal agreement” is worth squat.
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The Warriors didn’t have a verbal agreement with free agent guard Malcolm Brogdon, but there was interest in bringing in the former Rookie of the Year this summer. But presented with the choice between signing with the Knicks and living in a state of limbo while the Warriors decide whether to sign or trade their fourth or fifth most important player, Brogdon wisely chose the Knicks.
How many other useful players sent the Warriors’ calls to voicemail this summer?
And what’s to say Horford, with other teams calling (and they are absolutely calling), doesn’t jump ship at the last minute?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not absolving Kuminga here. His demands are preposterous. He thinks he’s a perennial All-Star who has role players around him, not the other way around. It’s incorrect at best, and downright absurd if we’re not bothering with decorum.
The guy reportedly said he’d only buy into a championship run if the team gave in to one of his many outlandish demands: a three-year guaranteed deal, a full no-trade clause, or an overinflated one-year deal.
His agent and budding podcaster, Aaron Turner, will call it “tough negotiations.”
As a guy who negotiates with a 3-year-old every night, I recognize his tactics.
But Turner knows there’s at least one person in the Warriors’ front office — I can think of one, his name rhymes with Toe Jacob — who sees Kuminga’s delusional vision and won’t trade him or let him sign the qualifying offer.
And the front office on the whole is trying to make a full-court shot at the buzzer, appeasing Kuminga to the point where he agrees, for the first time, to buy into the Warriors program, while also maintaining the fiscal flexibility to trade him in the winter.
On what planet is that going to happen?
It’s not Earth.
A stronger organization would have accepted reality and ended this weeks ago. They wouldn’t have wasted valuable time or energy fighting a battle they cannot win. Kuminga will never be the player they want him to be in San Francisco, so why fight so hard to keep him here?
They would have put their foot down: Here’s a fair offer, take it or leave it.
Instead, the Warriors gave an inch, and Kuminga’s team took a mile.
And another mile.
And another.
And now, Kuminga is threatening to turn down a $40 million contract just to take a one-year, $8 million deal that comes with a no-trade clause. Bad business, but these are not rational actors at play.
The good news, you’d think, is that qualifying offers expire Oct. 1. Something has to happen, right?
If only logic were guiding this process.
Little has made sense up to this point, so what’s to say the two sides don’t let the deadline pass and continue to bash their heads against a wall for another few weeks?
All the while, the rest of the NBA gets better, and the Warriors stay right where they are.
The Warriors and Kuminga both carry a ridiculous and, lately, unearned sense of superiority. They deserve each other.
Kuminga’s destiny is to be the best player on a bad team.
The Warriors seem strangely intent on being that bad team.
And in the meantime, everyone else — Steph Curry, Jimmy Butler, Steve Kerr, Horford — has to push forward, answering questions come Monday, and embracing the purgatory that is the situation for as long as it takes; mere collateral damage in this battle of incompetence.