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Report: Nets not expected to prepare Kuminga offer sheet originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

The Brooklyn Nets aren’t expected to prepare Jonathan Kuminga an offer sheet this summer.

With the Warriors forward set to become a restricted free agent this offseason, there were several rumors that the Nets would make an offer given their salary-cap situation. However, that doesn’t appear to be the case.

“There is not a current expectation that the Brooklyn Nets are preparing an offer sheet for Kuminga, but there are signs Brooklyn could be willing to use its open cap space as a vehicle to execute multi-team trade scenarios this summer,” The Athletic’s Anthony Slater reported.

“That could open up several avenues and possible suitors for Kuminga, one of the market’s most intriguing names. The Warriors’ front office, with the help of new cap specialist Jon Phelps, showed some creativity last summer, routing Thompson’s departure into a six-team sign-and-trade that delivered Buddy Hield and Kyle Anderson (after generating the space for De’Anthony Melton).”

The 22-year-old has all of the physical talents to become an elite NBA player, but he has struggled with consistency during his tenure with the Warriors. With Golden State committed to building around Steph Curry, Draymond Green and Jimmy Butler next season, it doesn’t seem likely that Kuminga will fit into those plans.

After trading for Butler, Kuminga fell out of the rotation almost entirely, seeing significant game action only after Curry went down with a Grade 1 hamstring strain in the Western Conference Semifinals.

Given the 22-year-old’s contract situation, it’s more feasible for a sign-and-trade deal to materialize, and it’s possible that Golden State could get some solid players in the exchange.

The Warriors selected Kuminga with the No. 7 overall pick in the 2021 NBA Draft with the expectation that it would take time for him to develop into an elite-level player. While he has flashed brilliance at times, it’s clear that the “two-timeline” approach owner Joe Lacob envisioned isn’t working out.

With Curry continuing to play at a high level, it’s clear that general manager Mike Dunleavy and the rest of the Golden State front office are looking to acquire more complementary pieces to fill out the roster.

Only time will tell if Kuminga fits into those plans or not.

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The definition of success is subjective, ephemeral. But in today’s sports zeitgeist, it’s becoming less so: “rings culture” dominates all, serving as the wall into which any nuanced conversation inevitably crashes: “But did they win?” Of course, each NBA team enters the season every year with the same goal: to hoist the Larry O’Brien trophy. But only one team can every year, so does that make the other 29 failures?

The Minnesota Timberwolves present an interesting counterpoint: their fanbase is, no doubt, deeply disappointed this morning after a harrowing blowout loss in Oklahoma City, which means the team came up short of the NBA finals in devastating, decisive fashion for the second year in a row. On the other hand, they’ve made back to back Western Conference finals for the first time in team history, gone from league laughing stock to bona fide perennial contender, and have one of the most exciting young stars in basketball, 23-year-old Anthony Edwards.

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Edwards has fallen victim to a classic conundrum for a young, fast rising star athlete: disappointing people by not quickly enough becoming a thing he never asked to be. In his case, that’s “face of the league,” an idea foisted upon him almost instantaneously by an NBA public wooed by the guard who plays a bit like one Michael Jeffrey Jordan. Edwards’s popularity grew rapidly, due to his Jordan-esque explosiveness, propensity for highlight dunks, and sparkling charisma. The devil-may-care Edwards has spoken on the record, several times, about not being particularly interested in being the “face” of the NBA, a plight LeBron James (whose team Edwards recently sent packing for the season) says he empathizes with. “I understand,” James, who has served as the face of the NBA for two decades, told the Los Angeles Times recently. “I completely understand. There’s this weird energy when it comes to that.”

Charles Barkley recently made some somewhat controversial comments on the subject. “Don’t try and make Anthony Edwards the face of the NBA,” Barkley said. “You can’t give [the title of face of the NBA] to people. They have to take it.” It certainly seemed, in moments throughout the postseason, like Edwards was doing exactly that, wrestling the title from his elders inadvertently or otherwise. His dismantling of a Los Angeles Lakers team spearheaded by James and Luka Dončić, who sent Edwards and the Timberwolves home last season, was decisive and damned impressive, showcasing his newfound basketball maturity and growth as a playmaker. And while his team lucked out when the Warriors’ Stephen Curry was ruled out of the Western Conference semi-finals with a hamstring injury, you can only play the team in front of you, and Edwards & Co made quick work of Golden State, too.

The Timberwolves had lost a cumulative two games through two series until they ran into the freight train that is the Oklahoma City Thunder. The Thunder’s historically great defense brutally exposed Minnesota’s flaws, and they were the first team to make Edwards look every bit of what he really is: 23 years old. It’s easy to forget when young stars come into the league after a single-year in college that, even five seasons into their NBA tenure, they’re still so very young. But Edwards is young, and while it was another whimper of an ending to his playoffs, the fact that he already has two conference finals runs and marked improvement as a player under his belt should serve as encouragement. He showed flashes of his newfound maturity, and flashes of the years of work left to reach his sky-high potential, in this playoff run. Edwards’s time will come. But it’s not here yet.

The Thunder are a young team, and they will probably stand between Minnesota and a place in the NBA finals for some time to come. But it would be wrong to place the blame for the Timberwolves’ playoff exit at Edwards’s feet. The team has a lot of existential (and financial) questions to answer this summer. For starters, there’s Julius Randle, the player Minnesota took a gamble on when they traded Karl-Anthony Towns to the New York Knicks last October. Randle, who has a checkered playoff résumé to say the least, had a rocky start in Minnesota, but rounded into form after the All-Star break and had a scintillating star turn in the first two rounds of the postseason. The conference finals, where he scored fewer than seven points in two games and looked lost for much of three of them, were a different story. Randle is on an expiring contract with a player option this summer, and the Wolves will have to take another gamble in guessing which version of Randle is to come, and if there’s a place for him moving forward.

Naz Reid, a beloved fan-favorite and former sixth man of the year, may have cost himself a pretty penny with his disappointing showing throughout the playoffs, but he’s still expected to forgo his bargain $15m player option and enter free agency this summer, another tough call for the Timberwolves to make. Nickeil Alexander-Walker (who, as ESPN is quick to remind us, is MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s cousin) is also a free agent this summer, and has likely earned himself a bit of a pay bump over the course of his stint in Minnesota. Then there’s Rudy Gobert, whose albatross of a contract would most likely be difficult to move, even with his multi-time Defensive Player of the Year bona fides. But he’s been a clunky fit with Edwards, is a general liability offensively, and was mostly played off the floor by Thunder. Tim Connelly, the president of basketball operations the ‘Wolves wooed away from Denver, has done a mostly bang-up job to this point in Minnesota. But if he wants to steward Edwards’s potential, he has difficult decisions this offseason.

No one wants to see their favorite team outclassed in the manner the Timberwolves were in Oklahoma City on Wednesday evening. And the summer ahead is a murky one for the direction of the franchise and its roster. But to go from the butt of every NBA joke, whose claim to fame, for many fans, was either alienating Kevin Garnett or passing, twice, on Stephen Curry in the draft, to a perennial championship contender with a budding homegrown superstar, is a win. Or, one might say, a success.

How SGA can achieve rare Steph feat with OKC NBA Finals win originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and his Oklahoma City Thunder are on a historic run to the 2025 NBA Finals.

After leading the Thunder to the NBA’s best 2024-25 regular-season record behind his proficient play, Gilgeous-Alexander was awarded the NBA Most Valuable Player award.

And by sweeping the Memphis Grizzlies in the first round of the Western Conference playoffs, knocking out Nikola Jokic and the Denver Nuggets in seven games and then dominating Anthony Edwards and the Minnesota Timberwolves in five games to earn a trip to the 2025 NBA Finals, Gilgeous-Alexander now has an opportunity to achieve a rare milestone last completed by none other than Warriors superstar Steph Curry.

If Gilgeous-Alexander and his guys can defeat either the Indiana Pacers or the New York Knicks on the biggest stage in basketball, the 26-year-old guard would become the first player to win NBA MVP and the Finals in the same season in 10 years.

Curry and the Warriors dynasty won their first championship during that 2014-15 season, when he averaged 23.8 points on 48.7-percent shooting from the field and 44.3 percent from distance, with 4.3 rebounds, 7.7 assists and 2.0 steals in 32.7 minutes through 80 regular-season games.

The Warriors guard won his first of two NBA MVPs that year, and his second in the following season.

Gilgeous-Alexander has put on a show through 16 playoff games with the Thunder, averaging 29.8 points on an efficient 47.1 percent shooting, with 5.7 rebounds, 6.9 assists and 1.6 steals in 36.5 minutes.

And now, he’s four wins away from being in the same company as the greatest shooter of all time.

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Why Draymond doesn't view Giannis as greatest modern power forward originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

Draymond Green explained his reasoning for why Milwaukee Bucks superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo isn’t the greatest power forward of this era.

The Warriors’ power forward was asked if he agreed or disagreed with the assertion that Antetokounmpo is the best player at that position right now.

“I’m going to disagree,” Green told Baron Davis on “The Draymond Green Show.” “And the reason I disagree is this. Giannis has played in an era where it kind of became positionless basketball. And I don’t necessarily think that Giannis is a power forward and has been [during his career]. And that’s why I disagree with that.

“Because Giannis is one of the greatest players of this era, and the game was kind of positionless. What made people start calling Giannis a power forward is because you had to start putting power forwards in the center [position] on Giannis [to guard him].”

Antetokounmpo possesses one of the NBA’s most versatile skill sets, able to penetrate to the rim while also serving as the primary ballhandler. Few players in the league’s history have possessed such a unique combination of size and speed, making it a special challenge to build a team around him.

Green understands this, and the way the Bucks have surrounded Antetokounmpo with shooters might lead one to believe he was playing as a power forward.

“The team that you build around Giannis because his skillset is so great driving and getting downhill, that you put a lot of shooting around him,” Green told Davis. “So then when people look at the game, they’re like, ‘Oh, well Jrue Holiday must be this position, and Chris Middleton must be this position, and Brooke Lopez is the five,’ ok great, so Giannis is a power forward.

“But if you look at the great power forwards. Giannis doesn’t play like Tim Duncan; Giannis doesn’t play like Kevin Garnett. So, I think people are being lazy and don’t understand what they’re looking at, and so they pigeonhole him into the power forward position. And I just don’t think that’s very accurate.”

The modern game of basketball relies on players like Antetokounmpo, who can effectively play multiple positions. Instead of rigid positions and offensive sets, players are expected to have versatility. Essentially, the game has broken down into long-range shooters (mainly guards) and interior players (forwards and centers) who can also move the ball and take shots from beyond the arc.

The evolution of the game makes historical comparisons at each position tenuous at best. Just looking at a shot chart from 2005 versus 2025 shows how dramatically things have changed.

Green is a student of the sport, having started his career when his teammates Steph Curry and Klay Thompson revolutionized the 3-point shot. So, he’s well aware of the seismic change the NBA has undergone in the past decade, with a shift towards more positionless basketball.

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