Jonathan Kuminga’s playoff debut for the Atlanta Hawks came Saturday in a 113-102 loss to the New York Knicks in Game 1 of their first-round series, and it looked a lot like the problem the Warriors had already spent months trying to solve. The 23-year-old sixth man played 27 minutes but took just four field-goal attempts through the first three quarters before finally flashing in the fourth.
Kuminga scored five points in less than three minutes early in the fourth quarter, but New York had already built a 106-87 lead by the time he was subbed out with 4:26 left. He did not return after that. For a player selected seventh overall, the usage was strikingly familiar: brief touches, a quiet middle stretch and only a short burst of the aggressive scoring that has long made him one of the league’s more intriguing young forwards.
That was exactly the concern Steve Kerr had flagged before February’s trade, when he said Kuminga was “a player who needs long stretches and touches to find his rhythm, otherwise he’s going to struggle to make the impact he has the potential of delivering.” Kerr’s handling of Kuminga became a major talking point during his time with the Warriors, especially after last year’s first-round series against the Houston Rockets, when he drew DNPs and limited minutes before later stepping into a much larger role.
The contrast was sharp after Stephen Curry’s hamstring injury in the second round, when Kuminga played heavy minutes and led the Warriors in scoring. That stretch showed what he can do when given room to work, and Saturday’s Game 1 offered the opposite. The Hawks needed more from him in a playoff opener that slipped away early, but his best minutes came only after the game had already moved past the point where they could change its course.
