With Andrew Wiggins bound to miss his 19th straight game tonight, questions abound in Golden State as the playoffs close in.
What is going on in his life is clearly serious enough to take precedence over ball in hoop, a concept many fans are unable to reconcile. But the reality is the Warriors still have a basketball team to maintain and need to start asking what happens if Wiggins remains with his family for the duration of the playoffs.
The answer to the question is Jonathan Kuminga.
Stepping Up Offensively
Since Wiggins’ exit from the lineup, Kuminga has taken his consistency on the offensive end to new heights. In the 15 games since (interrupted by a brief ankle twist), he’s scoring 14 points per game despite playing only 25 minutes per. Shooting 58% on twos is very promising, but shooting 42% on threes over that stretch is eye-opening. It’s the best floor-spacing he’s provided thus far in his career, and couldn’t come at a better time.
What has stood out to me the most is the mix of confidence and positive results in isolation. He’s been crushing from the midrange recently, showing a soft touch on his shots we rarely saw during his rookie season:
His development as a pinch offensive creator goes a long way toward filling the Wiggins role. Two-Way Wiggs doesn’t often find himself controlling things offensively, but with so much creation burden on Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, and Jordan Poole, they need a guy to spell them for a possession now and then. And unlike Wiggs, Kuminga is capable of creating more than just a long two by himself.
What’s more, this rise in efficiency and creation has not come at the expense of the other facets of his offensive game. He’s still one of the more efficient cutters on the team. Kuminga’s cut frequency places him in the 71st percentile amongst all wings, and his 1.39 PPP mark on cuts rates in the 69th percentile. Very nice.
On top of proficient cutting, his efficacy has a screener really jumps off the page. He’s developing into one of their better slip threats, finding ways to help spring Golden State’s shooters off his screens while learning to read the floor and pick his chances to roll and attack the rim.
As if it couldn’t get better, he’s beginning to learn soft lefty finishes to make himself an even more difficult contain. Though only in the fledgling stages, the Warriors have learned how to make Wiggins a paint threat with only one finishing hand. Surely they could do a lot offensively with a combo forward capable of finishing with his off hand.
The cutting, screening, and presence on the offensive glass make Kuminga a surprisingly good replacement for Wiggs on the glamorous end of the floor, but the shooting concerns lurk. Steve Kerr has said himself the reason we haven’t seen a 1:1 replacement is the shooting concern of a Kuminga/Draymond/Looney frontcourt. And though Kuminga has been streaky at times, he’s been above 40% for the past three months. Perhaps he can keep it up and make teams pay for leaving him open off Steph and Klay, hitting enough threes and attacking closeouts to pull his weight on that end of the floor.
Am I arguing that Kuminga is the third Splash Triplet going forward? Absolutely not. But has he shown he could hit above 40% of his open three looks for a seven-game series? Absolutely yes. The playoffs are often about capturing variability from your role guys, and he is capable of the positive kind of statistical outlier.
It’s unreasonable to expect him to match the consistency that Wiggins brought on that end of the floor, but he could certainly imitate it at times while bringing his own unique screen-and-slip dynamism to the lineup.
A Capable Defensive Replacement
Not many teams can boast a quality stand-in for an absent defensive stud. On most squads, your A1 perimeter defender disappearing into thin air spells doom. Not when you have a future defensive ace waiting in the wings.
Kuminga’s +0.9 defensive estimated plus-minus places him third amongst all Warriors, and you can probably guess the top two. By that metric, he’s among the top 20% of wing defenders in the league this season, and the film absolutely matches the stats.
He’s starting to pair his 100th percentile athletic tools with floor awareness and patience. Instead of trying to do everything everywhere all at once, Kuminga is learning to steer his matchups into help and exist within the system, finding himself out of position less and less. He’s still foul-prone (14th percentile foul rate) but more than capable of serious event creation with his athletic package and improved positioning (75th percentile block rate, 58th percentile steal rate amongst forwards).
Though he’s not the impact defensive rebounder that Andrew Wiggins can be, he’s more than capable of generating stops at a high rate. As the positive showings outweigh the negative by an increasing number as time goes on, there’s reason to believe Kuminga can be a capable replacement as the A1 perimeter guy, especially when surrounded by savvy vets who can provide him with the right guidance off the floor and the right help rotations and direction on it.
Filling In the Gaps
I’m not arguing that a dropoff from Wiggins to Kuminga is nonexistent. If Andy remains out throughout the playoffs, Golden State will suffer as a result, there’s no denying that. Yet every playoff team deals with absences, and the West is full of absurd on-ball creators that cannot be matched up with Klay Thompson, Steph Curry, or Donte Divincenzo. Fortunately, they have a guy who has shown he can not only take on these matchups, but win them outright on some nights.
They need an uber-athletic forward to take the hard defensive assignments, leak out in transition, and make enough shots on the other end to keep the defense honest and take pressure off the primary creators.
I think Kuminga is ready to be that guy. There’s only one way to find out if I’m right.
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