Steve Kerr offered a candid assessment of Jonathan Kuminga’s development, arguing that the forward might have grown faster if he had entered the NBA with a struggling team instead of a contender.
Kerr’s point was straightforward: young players often need heavy minutes, freedom to make mistakes, and the space to learn outside the glare that comes with championship expectations. Kuminga, in Kerr’s view, never truly had that environment in Golden State.
“The optimal circumstance for JK when he entered the NBA would have been to go to a bad team. Instead, he came to a championship team,” Kerr told Nick Friedell of The Athletic. “But the way to develop in this league is to play 30, 35 minutes every night, make your mistakes, learn from your mistakes, grow, be able to do it out of the spotlight. And he wasn’t able to do any of those things (here), and I recognize that. That’s why I’m really hoping that the change in scenery will be what he needed.”
Kuminga’s Warriors career was always shaped by the tension between upside and circumstance. Golden State drafted him into a veteran system built around Stephen Curry, Draymond Green, and a team still chasing titles, not rebuilding. On a roster like that, development is rarely linear. Minutes are earned differently, mistakes are magnified, and patience can run short when every game is tied to playoff positioning.
Kerr’s remarks also read as a quiet acknowledgment of the reality many young players face on elite teams. In a rebuilding situation, a prospect can play 30 to 35 minutes, experiment, fail, adjust, and grow through repetition. On a championship-level team, that same player often has to develop in shorter bursts, with less room for error and far more scrutiny. That does not make the situation unfair, but it does make it harder. Kerr appeared to recognize exactly that in looking back on Kuminga’s time with the Warriors.
