Steve Kerr reveals Jonathan Kuminga's potential role alongside Jimmy Butler
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With Golden State Warriors forward Jonathan Kuminga expected to return to the court Thursday against the Sacramento Kings, the head coach Steve Kerr is actively thinking about how the seventh overall pick of the 2021 draft fits next to Jimmy Butler, Stephen Curry, and the rest of the team.
On the Willard and Dibs show, Kerr talked about how Kuminga will have to adapt his playstyle to fit a completely different team.
"I think his last couple of weeks [before the injury], we were running a lot of things through him because Jimmy wasn't here yet," Kerr said on 95.7 FM The Game. "Jimmy is one of the best players in the league. He's proven it. Soon as he got here, we started winning. And so we're going to run through Jimmy Butler, and we're going to run through Steph Curry. What that requires of [Kuminga] is to be settling into a role to support those guys and that's slightly different and that's just something that he has to adapt to."
This isn't the first time Kerr's stated his plan to stick with what's been gelling in the twelve wins since Butler joined the Warriors. After Saturday's win over the Pistons, Kerr expressed his commitment to, "playing the guys who are helping [the Warriors] win right now," like Gui Santos.
With players like Santos, Moses Moody, and Quinton Post playing the best basketball of their careers right now, it's tough for Kerr to shuffle around everyone's minutes without disrupting the flow the team has built in their 12-2 stretch since the trade deadline.
But Butler, who's taken a number of the Dubs' young guys under his wing after practice, isn't worried about Kuminga's fit.
"I think it's going to be easy," Butler said when he joined the Warriors after the deadline. "Hella athletic. Can shoot it. Can score in a multitude of ways. Can definitely guard. I think he's going to come back and do what he's been doing. My job is to make it even easier on him."
With Butler's high IQ playmaking, he'll look to set Kuminga up working off the ball. A deadly slasher and a genuine lob threat, Kuminga offers the Warriors another dimension on offense. The Dubs will also look to leverage Curry’s gravity in lineups featuring three below-average 3-point shooters in Butler, Kuminga, and Draymond Green.
"The whole thing is winning. The bottom line is: what's it going to take to win on Thursday night?” Kerr said. “That's how I'm going to coach and that's how we're going to play. There's no doubt [Kuminga] can help us do that. As he gets more and more comfortable, he'll have more and more of an opportunity to help us win."
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