By Brian Murphy
The Jock Blog is about to lead with a sentence heretofore unwritten in the history of Jock Blog-dom:
The Atlanta Hawks (29-31) play at the Washington Wizards (16-41) Thursday — GET YA POPCORN READY.
I’d have said that the phrase ‘GET YA POPCORN READY’ has actually *never* been affiliated with a Hawks-Wizards game, but that would be disrespectful to the April 2017 Eastern Conference first round playoff showdown. You remember — when John Wall and Bradley Beal led the nation’s capital hoopers, rocking the four seed, past Paul Millsap and Forever Warrior Dennis Schroder’s Hotlanta five seed. Wiz in six, don’t ya know.
But that was a lifetime ago — before COVID and the popularity of TikTok. Besides, you were too busy admiring the Kevin Durant Warriors about to bring the Larry O’Brien trophy back to Oakland.
So a Hawks-Wizards game on a Thursday in late February 2026 would generally be considered dreck.
Except there’s this Kuminga guy.
That’s right. After so many Jock Blogs wondering what will become of the Golden State Warriors’ first-round pick — 7th overall — selected on July 29, 2021; after so many talk radio segments, so many tweets, so many podcasts, so many Reddit threads, so much fatigue . . . Jonathan Kuminga is an Atlanta Hawk.
And he just might be must-see TV.
Tuesday night was a night of what the kids might call “bad looks”. The listless Warriors, playing without Steph Curry, Jimmy Butler and without their new add, the perennially missing Kristaps Porzingis, lost to the lowly Pelicans in New Orleans.
On the same night, new Atlanta Hawk Jonathan Kuminga was — how can we put this? — going *off* as the Hawks dusted the Wizards. The line: 27 points in 24 minutes, 9-of-12 shooting, 3-for-4 from distance, 6-for-7 from the foul line, seven rebounds, four assists, two steals. He did have two turnovers, the bum.
Warriors fans buried their faces in their hands.
What just happened?
On the one hand, it was just one game. Against the Washington Wizards. As will Thursday be, too — one game. Against the Washington Wizards.
And we’ve seen this version of Kuminga before, too, if you want to rationalize. Eight times, he scored 27 or more for the Dubs, including mouth-watering nights on Dec. 27, 2024 at the Clippers and Dec. 28, 2024 at home against the Suns when he scored 34 points each night. And before you say “yeah, but he couldn’t do that in a Steph-centric offense” — Steph Curry did play in the Phoenix game.
Steve Kerr would probably point to this stat: in those eight games where Kuminga flourished, the Warriors went 4-4.
And to be fair to the Kerr side, Kuminga was not consistently beastly. Thus, the Kuminga Wars.
Look, the man’s physical talents are almost beyond dispute. Size, speed, strength, athleticism, outside shooting — Kuminga is an offensive wagon.
But as we all know far too well, Kuminga did not do the things in the Warriors offense that Kerr and the coaching staff wanted him to do.
Thus, the unstoppable force — Kuminga — met the immovable object — the bench.
This is only one game old, and by the time you read this, two games old after Thursday’s Hawks-Wizards game. The verdict on the Kuminga trade will come if and when Porzingis finds a miracle fountain of health and contributes mightily this year and next (loud cough), and when we watch and see how defenses adjust to Kuminga and how Kuminga adjusts to something more than a screw-the-Warriors-and-Steve Kerr short burst of adrenaline.
This, though, could turn out very poorly for the Warriors. Kuminga could be that dude. There is a scenario where Kerr has to wear this one, and Warriors fans rue the ultimate one that got away.
Hence, popcorn.
