The Atlanta Hawks have roughly five weeks to decide whether they will pick up Jonathan Kuminga's $24.3 million team option. Even as they're weighing which direction to take, they're still in a better position had Kristaps Porziņġis stuck around, especially if the Warriors decline to re-sign him this summer when he hits unrestricted free agency, as Tim Kawakami of The San Francisco Standard thinks they should (subscription required).
In this environment, I don't see how the Warriors can bring back both Kristaps Porzingis (unrestricted free agent) and Al Horford (player option for next season), even if both are interested in returning.
Kawakami framed it as, "The Warriors can't collect a bunch of injury question marks again." As Hawks fans know just from Porziņġis' half-season with the team, he falls into that category. He played only 15 games before Atlanta sent him to Golden State for Kuminga, and he finished the regular season there, playing only 17 games.
The Warriors already know that they'll be without Jimmy Butler and Moses Moody for a chunk of the 2026-27 season. Other injuries could happen, but the Warriors might not want to chance it by re-signing Porziņġis, who hasn't played over 60 games in a season since 2022-23.
Warriors could decide against bringing Porzingis back
Golden State GM Mike Dunleavy said last week that KP (and Horford) were players that the team would "definitely" love to have back, citing Porziņġis' two-way talent.
The Warriors are still very much in a win-now position with Steph Curry at the helm, so that alone could be enough for them to bring Porziņġis back, regardless of his injury concerns. They could feel even more pressure to do so after watching Kuminga enjoy big moments for the Hawks to close out the regular season and during the first round of the playoffs.
Hawks are still in a better position with Kuminga
Whether Golden State re-signs KP or not, that won't change the fact that Atlanta was right to move on when it did. Even better, the Hawks got a 23-year-old out of it. They don't have the sample size they'd prefer when evaluating Kuminga's team option and future, but he's still someone who can grow alongside their younger core. KP wasn't.
Maybe Porziņġis would've been healthy enough to contribute to Atlanta's playoff push enough so that the front office would've considered re-signing him this summer, but that's a big maybe. The Hawks couldn't count on him to be on the floor the first few months of the season, and the Warriors couldn't in the last.
Atlanta came out on the winning end of this one, and no matter what Golden State can realistically do, that won't change.
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