The Harsh Truth: Who is Responsible for the Warriors’ “Disastrous” Summer? Revealing the Troublemaker!

Late last month, Jonathan Kuminga’s agent managed to sum up a summer of agita for Warriors fans with just a few keystrokes.

It’s not clear why Aaron Turner, an 11-year veteran NBA agent, decided that July 23 was a good time to end a monthslong posting hiatus — his previous three posts on X were an updated profile picture and tagging X users for NFT whitelists — but on that random Wednesday, he posted a response to another post that mentioned his client. The post that caught Turner’s attention called into question a report that Kuminga was offered a 5-year, $150 million contract.

“NO one on our side was turning down 30M a year,” the agent’s post read. “Our camp is smarter than that. Narrative makes no sense, twisted up Slater’s words I think! #Fakenews”

When another user in the thread said Kuminga “needs to fire his out of touch advisers,” Turner responded with, “You have no idea what we want or what we have asked for.”

Here’s what the public does have some idea about: For weeks now, Kuminga and the Warriors have been in a negotiating stalemate with no end. Because of Kuminga’s status as a restricted free agent, Golden State is locked into roster-building limbo and remains the only NBA team to not make a single move this offseason. Until they know what the fifth-year wing’s salary will be, the Dubs can’t be certain they can afford their presumed free agent signings of Al Horford and De’Anthony Melton.

It’s clear that Kuminga is in favor of this approach, but Turner has been behind him the whole way. However, the agent’s approach has been questionable to say the least. Even if Turner is correct that Kuminga was never offered a $30 million salary, the fact that random speculation on Twitter about a misconstrued rumor garnered a Trumpian social media post in the midst of a huge negotiation has some problematic optics.

The multiple posts would perhaps look better if the negotiating tactics weren’t suspect as well. According to several reports, the Warriors have a two-year, $45 million offer on the table to Kuminga, with a team option for the second year and a demand to waive a no-trade clause in order to sign it. The 22-year-old’s biggest leverage play against the team is taking the qualifying offer from Golden State, locking him into a one-year, $7.9 million contract with a no-trade clause that will almost certainly result in him signing with another team the following season. It’s clear which path Kuminga wants, according to a report from ESPN’s Anthony Slater on Monday.

“The Warriors have not upped their offer, and Kuminga has indicated to those close to him that the $7.9 million qualifying offer is more appealing to him than the Warriors’ current pitch,” Slater wrote.

While taking the qualifying offer does hamper the Warriors’ ability to build for next season — and is why the Warriors are offering him more money in order to waive the clause — picking that path sure looks like a case of cutting off one’s nose to spite their face. Kuminga and his camp are willing to sacrifice tens of millions of dollars of guaranteed money today for a bigger payday next year that could easily be derailed — either through a catastrophic injury or the more likely scenario of Kuminga maintaining his middling-at-best position in Steve Kerr’s rotation.

The frequently discussed cautionary tale is Nerlens Noel, who passed on a $70 million deal from the Mavericks in restricted free agency, took the qualifying offer instead, tore a ligament in his right hand during the 2017-18 season and would go on to make a little over $27.1 million for the remainder of his career — Noel would later sue his agent over this decision.

Then there’s the website for Verus Basketball, the agency where Aaron Turner works as “pres. of basketball.” The issues range from small mistakes like the link to Terry Rozier’s Instagram page directing to his old username, gmb_chum12, not to mention the fact that their flagship client is, at the very least, involved in a gambling investigation by the U.S. government. There are sloppier mistakes too, like an image of former Wizards forward JT Thor linking to a profile page of Derrick Jones Jr., who switched his representation to Klutch Sports last summer. If the goal of an agency site is to showcase what the organization has done and is capable of doing, this is doing the opposite of that.

It’s now been two weeks since any substantial updates regarding these negotiations have popped up. According to Slater, the 22-year-old’s ideal contract is one “that would signify a commitment to him as a future building block for the Warriors or elsewhere,” rather than one that would be easier to trade midseason. It may very well be that some team in the NBA will want to have a player of Kuminga’s caliber on their roster as a “future building block,” but whether that organization also wants to commit to the representation in Kuminga’s corner, one that comes with the baggage of loose Twitter fingers and grinding a team’s entire offseason to a halt, is perhaps the bigger question.