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Kerr confirms Warriors' Kuminga is set to make his return on Thursday as originally planned, as reported by NBC Sports Bay Area.

The surging Warriors likely will receive a big boost to their lineup for Thursday’s game against the Sacramento Kings.

Fourth-year forward Jonathan Kuminga is nearing a return to the court after missing 31 games with an ankle injury, and in an interview with 95.7 The Game’s “Willard & Dibs” on Tuesday, Warriors coach Steve Kerr confirmed the team’s plan for Kuminga to play Thursday, barring a setback, and discussed his immediate role with the team after his extended absence.

“It looks good for Thursday, that is the plan,” Kerr told Mark Willard and Dan Dibley. “We’ll see until the last moment. You never want to announce anything, but assuming he doesn’t have any setbacks in the next two days here, he should go on Thursday. We’re excited to get him back, and obviously we’re going to keep doing what we’re doing, we’re not going to change the starting lineup. But excited to incorporate JK back into the rotation, and we’ll see how it goes.

“He really, at this point, because we’re on a roll, because we’re really clicking, and the rotation is good [and] lots of good stuff is happening, he just has to adapt to us and come out and do the things that he knows are going to help us win, which is sprint the floor and offensive rebound. All the things that Gui [Santos] has been doing, that Moses [Moody] has been doing. That’s what’s helping us win, so that’s what I’ll be asking from JK as well.”

Before Kuminga suffered the ankle sprain on Jan. 4, the 22-year-old was averaging 19.8 points on 46.7-percent shooting from the field and 37.3 percent from 3-point range, along with 5.6 rebounds per game in the five weeks leading up to the injury.

Now Kuminga returns to a Warriors lineup that underwent an overhaul at the NBA trade deadline after the blockbuster trade for star forward Jimmy Butler.

Kerr believes the Butler addition, and the ripple effects it has had on Golden State’s roster as a whole, will benefit Kuminga upon his return.

“I think [Kuminga’s] last couple of weeks, we were really running a lot of things through him because Jimmy wasn’t here yet,” Kerr explained. “And now that Jimmy’s here, look, Jimmy’s one of the best players in the league. He’s proven it, as soon as he got here we started winning, and we’re going to run through Jimmy Butler, and we’re going to run through Steph Curry. And what that requires of JK is settling in to a role to support those guys. That’s slightly different, and that’s something he’s just going to have to adapt to.”

The Warriors, with a proven and consistent second scoring option to Curry in Butler, no longer are relying on Kuminga to ascend to that role as they might have been before the trade.

And the pressure alleviated from the young forward’s shoulders could benefit him and the team throughout the remainder of the 2024-25 NBA season.

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