The Lakers finally put a number on Jonathan Kuminga. It is not a number he wants to hear.
Per Anthony Slater of ESPN, Los Angeles has offered Kuminga a two-year, $20 million deal. That is $10 million per year for a 22-year-old former lottery pick who just had his $46.8 million team option declined by the Warriors. Kuminga wants more, and it is not hard to understand why.
This is a lowball. Full stop.
The Lakers know exactly what they are doing here. They see a market that has cooled on Kuminga. They see a player whose fit in Golden State never worked. They see a young wing who has not yet figured out how to be efficient at scale, and they are pricing him accordingly. From a pure asset perspective, it is smart business.
From a Kuminga perspective, it is insulting. He is 22 years old. He is a top-ten athlete at his position. He has flashed real scoring ability. He is exactly the kind of upside bet that a team looking for a bench spark should be paying up for. Two years and $20 million tells him that Los Angeles does not believe in him.
The sign-and-trade angle is where it gets interesting. The Atlanta Hawks are reportedly willing to help facilitate a deal. Their proposal is Kuminga to the Lakers for Jarred Vanderbilt and a 2032 first-round pick swap. That is a real package. That would actually work.
Except Atlanta has no interest in Jarred Vanderbilt. And there is the problem.
Vanderbilt has become one of the harder contracts to move in the NBA. He is a good defender when healthy. He has not been healthy. His deal takes up cap space that a rebuilding team does not want to eat. The Hawks are apparently willing to be the middleman on a Kuminga deal, but they are not willing to take Vanderbilt as their prize for doing it.
That leaves the Lakers stuck. They need scoring off the bench. Kuminga would help. But the only path to getting him is either paying him what he wants outright or finding a third team that actually wants Vanderbilt. Neither of those things is happening quickly.
The Warriors declining that $46.8 million team option was the domino that started all of this. Once that number came off the board, Kuminga became a restricted free agent with real leverage problems. The teams with cap space are not lining up to overpay him. The teams that want him do not have the money.
Los Angeles is playing the market perfectly for their own interests. They know Kuminga has limited landing spots. They know his agent is going to have to eventually take something. If they can get him for two years at $20 million, that is a bench upgrade at a bargain price. If they cannot, they walk away and target someone else.
The problem is that this offer probably does not get the deal done. Kuminga has priced himself higher. His camp believes in his upside. Someone else, maybe a mid-market team looking for a swing bet, is going to come in with a bigger number and end this.
The Lakers need scoring off the bench and they need it badly. LeBron and Luka can only do so much. The bench was a disaster last season. Kuminga would help fix that. But you have to actually pay for the fix.
Two years and $20 million is not the fix. That is a placeholder offer. If Los Angeles is serious about getting Kuminga, they are going to have to open the checkbook. If they are not, Kuminga will land somewhere else and the Lakers bench stays broken.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
