Jonathan Kuminga is giving the Hawks enough to make the next decision hard. A little over a month into his Atlanta debut, the former seventh overall pick has played 13 of 25 possible games, and his production has already swung from eye-catching to uneven.
Kuminga has averaged 11.7 points, 5.3 rebounds and 2.1 assists in 21 minutes a night for Atlanta, with a 59.7% true shooting rate. He scored 27 points against Washington in his first game in a Hawks uniform, then 17 against Washington again and 20 against Portland, shooting 21-for-31 from the field and 5-for-9 from three over that opening three-game run. Since then, the picture has changed. He missed the next three games with inflammation in his left knee, has failed to reach double figures in five of his last ten appearances and has played in four consecutive games for Atlanta only once since being acquired at the deadline.
The Hawks’ decision matters now because Kuminga carries a $24.3 million team option for next season, and Wednesday’s game showed both why Atlanta is intrigued and why the sample is still thin. In transition against Orlando, he finished an easy two-point basket plus a foul, the kind of play that fits a team that ranks fifth in pace and fourth in transition frequency this season. Against Boston, the Hawks forced a turnover and turned it into a 3-on-2 fast-break chance. Those moments are part of what Atlanta hoped to buy when it brought him in after a frustrating, enigmatic four-and-a-half-year stint in Golden State, but they came after a stretch in which he missed a few weeks recovering from a bone bruise in his left knee after the trade and then injured that same knee against Dallas on Jan. 22.
The tension in Kuminga’s start is that the best stretches have come in the kind of open-floor basketball Atlanta wants, while the quieter nights have arrived against better competition. His numbers drop against Play-In and playoff-caliber opponents compared with lottery-bound teams, which makes the 278 minutes he has logged in a Hawks uniform feel even smaller than they are. Atlanta is trying to decide whether the flashes, the age and the athletic upside are enough to bet on, or whether the stop-start run is a preview of the player it is getting.
For now, Kuminga has given the Hawks proof of concept, not certainty. The option on the table is large, the sample is small, and Atlanta has seen enough to know the debate will not be simple.
