Why Warriors’ Kuminga believes he’s best served at power forward originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area
LAIE, Hawaii – As Warriors coach Steve Kerr continually preaches open competition in the starting lineup outside of Steph Curry, and presumably Draymond Green, fourth-year pro Jonathan Kuminga is looking to firmly establish his spot in search of a massive payday.
Kuminga, during a two-month stretch last season, proved he can be trusted to be the Warriors’ second-leading scorer alongside Curry when he averaged 19.1 points per game from the end of January to the end of March. The majority of those games featured Kuminga as the Warriors’ power forward with Andrew Wiggins at the three and Draymond Green serving as a small-ball center.
That could very well be how Kerr sees things playing out again, with a handful of people competing to start alongside Curry in the backcourt. If Kuminga is in the starting lineup, however, the 21-year-old, who turns 22 on Sunday, believes he is a small forward – not a power forward.
“I have been in this team for three years. There’s never a position I haven’t played on this team, so that’s not really my biggest concern,” Kuminga said Tuesday after the first day of training camp. “At the end of the day I know I’m a small forward and I can play at the highest level. But just going forward it’s about what the team wants you to do to help them win, to help them win.
“It doesn’t matter. Small forward or whatever, I’m just going to get better at it.”
The combination of Kuminga and Wiggins produced a minus-0.3 net rating last season with a 111.9 offensive rating and 112.2 defensive rating. Adding Green to the mix gave the trio a 10.9 net rating in 427 minutes with a 116.4 offensive rating and 105.5 defensive rating.
In order for Kuminga to cement himself as a useful small forward who can be trusted at the position consistently, he will need to make a big leap shooting the ball. His shot dropped in Year 3 from 3-point range after showing improvements the year before.
Kuminga was a 37 percent 3-point shooter his sophomore season on 2.2 attempts per game. This past season, Kuminga averaged the same amount of three-pointers per game, yet he dropped to a career-low 32.1 percent.
“All summer I’ve been working on my triples,” Kuminga said. “Against defense, no defense, catch and shoot – just trying to get my catch-and-shoot percentage up a lot higher because that’s going to help everybody. It will open up the floor even more.
“I’ve been working on that, and that’s my main focus.”
Refining himself as a catch-and-shoot threat would be a major upgrade for a team that is now without Klay Thompson. Kuminga made 35.2 percent of his catch-and-shoot attempts last season. Only Moses Moody (34.7 percent) and Wiggins (34.2 percent) were worse. Additionally, Kuminga had the lowest catch-and-shoot 3-point percentage on the team at 32.8 percent.
Who starts next to Curry is the question everyone wants to know. How the frontcourt is sorted, and if Kuminga’s self-assessment at forward is correct, could be just as important.
