Anthony Edwards and Chris Finch want Jonathan Kuminga to play loud
Yahoo Sports senior NBA analyst Kevin O'Connor recaps the Timberwolves pitch to Jonathan Kuminga with Kuminga's agent Aaron Turner. Turner explains that Minnesota hopes to see the Kuminga that the Wolves played against in the playoffs. Check out the full conversation on "The Kevin O'Connor Show" and subscribe on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , YouTube or wherever you listen .
Video Transcript
What, what was sold to you from Tim Conley?
What did make Minnesota the most appealing basketball fit?
Like, to be willing to sacrifice all that money and, and feel like this is a better expiring contract situation for him than staying Atlanta and being the eighth guy, as you said.
What makes Minnesota so appealing?
Yeah.
So well, he's not an expiring now, 'cause he does have You know, it's not an option Oh, he has the player option.
Right.
It could, it But it could- Yeah but you yourself in the FanDuel interview did say- Right you talked about Chicago and Sacramento a year from now as potential options.
So did- Well, hopefully, and let me say- Yeah hopefully it's Minnesota.
Hopefully we can, we can be a long-term home here.
That is the goal.
But the, the pitch is, and the pitch from Tim was, very straightforward.
Like, "I know what you're capable of."
they obviously had some analytics to back that up of each team does, looks at different kind of points.
But he, you know, defensively we can be incredible.
And I'm not buying a lot of the stuff I've heard, a lot of the noise.
And then, you know, Ant was a massive part of this whole thing, because again, he, he said, "Listen, you know, we're gonna guard.
Everybody's gonna guard.
Offensively," you know, one of the biggest things Ant and Chris Finch said to him is like, "We're " This whole thing of JK as a role player and all this stuff that's been talked about, that, that was not the pitch.
The pitch was, "Hey, JK, we want you to come here and be the guy that we had to play against in the playoffs.
Like, we want that dude.
Like, we're not asking you to go be something else.
We're asking you to be yourself."
Now, are we gonna have to all sacrifice and blend together our games?
For sure.
But this whole thing of like, oh, he has to adapt.
No, Ant's, Ant, who is, is unselfish of a, a star as you could imagine, and super secure with who he is, I mean, his whole thing was, "Look, I want you to come here, and I want you to do everything you do, and do it loudly.
I want I feel where you're coming from.
I c- I can understand what you've dealt with through these parts of your career, and I want you to come in here and be Jonathan Kuminga."
And that was the pitch from Chris Finch as well, of like, "Look, we're all gonna guard," and you know, again, everybody here on this team will have to sacrifice, right?
You, you know, they're gonna have to take the You know, everybody's gonna have to make sure that they're making the right play and not necessarily getting caught up in my turn, your turn, and that's on You know, I'm sure Chris Finch will figure that out.
When you have a great team, people have to sacrifice.
But the pitch was not come here and, oh, you gotta be this, quote-unquote, whatever you wanna call it, role player.
The thing was, "Hey, come here.
Be you.
We're all gonna have to sacrifice, but if it's about winning, and it's always gonna be about winning, and that's the most important thing, this thing has a chance to really work."
