It hasn't taken long for Jonathan Kuminga to show the Atlanta Hawks how legitimate his potential is. Unfortunately, the process of doing so has also revealed flaws in his structural fit with the Hawks that would ideally be resolved with time and patience.
Considering Kuminga has a club option for the 2026-27 season and only six regular season games remain in 2025-26, however, the Hawks must answer a burning question: Is he an ideal fit alongside Jalen Johnson?
Atlanta has something of an embarrassment of riches at the forward positions. Johnson, 24, is the oldest of its promising young players on the depth chart, with 20-year-old Zaccharie Risacher and Kuminga, 23, both displaying compelling signs of untapped potential.
Unfortunately, Kuminga's 11 games played with the Hawks haven't exactly confirmed whether or not he's an ideal fit next to the franchise player.
Kuminga has produced two 20-point games and five with at least 16. Unfortunately, he's shot a combined 11-of-34 from the field between the other six games. Injuries, a mid-season trade, and the Golden State Warriors effectively disregarding Kuminga must be considered as contributing factors to his apparent rust, but that doesn't make his future any easier to decide.
With Johnson being a high-usage playmaking forward and Kuminga struggling to shoot, it's difficult not to wonder if this duo can coexist. That makes caution a necessary angle.
Hawks should accept Jonathan Kuminga's club option, revisit future later
Kuminga signed a two-year, $46.8 million deal during the 2025 offseason that included a second-season club option. Considering it was public knowledge that the Warriors intended to trade Kuminga, the club option was seemingly meant to give his new team the opportunity to acquire him, decline the option, and then re-sign him to a multi-year deal.
With his Hawks tenure getting off to a somewhat polarizing start, however, the optimal choice would be for Atlanta to accept Kuminga's club option and then revisit his future at a later point in time.
Kuminga has a club option worth $24.3 million, which is no small amount of money for a player who may or may not fit with the team. He'll likely be looking for an annual salary in that range on any new deal he signs, which makes this a matter of short-term versus long-term risk.
Rather than giving Kuminga a multi-year deal and hoping that it works out with multiple seasons of financial limitations being incurred, accepting the club option would mitigate the risk.
It's not a perfect solution, as Kuminga could break out in 2026-27 and leave via unrestricted free agency during the summer. It's the unfortunate unpredictability of completing a mid-season trade, however, and Atlanta is too close to contending to make dramatically harmful decisions on a salary cap level.
With the jury still out on how Kuminga fits alongside Johnson, the only rational choice is to accept the club option and plant the seeds for a long-term decision being made in the near future.