Kurtenbach: Did the Warriors make a mistake in trading Jonathan Kuminga?

The good folks down in Atlanta were feeling themselves on Sunday.

Or, at least, the few dozen fans who hadn’t already beaten the traffic were.

“Thank you, Warriors!” was the chant from the lower bowl as Jonathan Kuminga stepped to the free-throw line during the Hawks’ 135-101 throttling of Portland.

It was Atlanta’s third straight win since acquiring the young forward, and suddenly, the narrative was set. Kuminga is thriving. The Hawks are rolling.

The Dubs, meanwhile, are a sad, depressing mess.

The combination has made it incredibly fashionable to ask: Did the Golden State Warriors make a colossal mistake by trading Jonathan Kuminga to the Hawks?

The answer is a resounding yes.

But not for the reason the box-score watchers think.

The mistake wasn’t finally pulling the plug on the Kuminga experiment. The mistake was dragging it out for years, stubbornly clutching a depreciating asset while better offers came and went.

Golden State’s front office couldn’t quit the idea of a young, athletic wing, ignoring a mountain of evidence that he simply did not fit — and that he had no plans on trying to anytime soon.

Their reward for this year-long bout of organizational denial? Kristaps Porzingis. A big man with a mysterious autoimmune disorder and a looming contract situation that will require two PhDs — one in immunology, one in capology — to figure out.

Jettisoning a former lottery pick for that kind of baggage isn’t just selling low: It’s a yard sale in a thunderstorm.

But trading Kuminga? That was the only thing the Warriors got right.

Kuminga looks good in red and yellow right now. He’s putting up 21 points and 8 boards. The dunks are undeniably spectacular.

And he is unquestionably a better fit for what the Hawks do than what the Warriors do.

Atlanta plays a high-energy, run-and-gun system that feasts on the transition offense that it creates with its exceptional defensive length.

Meanwhile, Kuminga is great at running fast and jumping high.

Furthermore, the Hawks run a five-out offense that swaps the center and power forward on the perimeter, giving him miles of space and asking absolutely nothing complicated of him. No deft cutting. No setting crucial off-ball screens.

He went from playing chess in the Bay to playing checkers in the A.

So naturally, other checkers players are looking at his early success has birthed the narrative that Golden State “held him back.”

That argument only works if you conveniently ignore that the Warriors’ complex, read-and-react system — the one that made Kuminga look like a man trying to read a menu in a dark restaurant — was built to maximize the greatest shooter who ever lived and produced four championship parades. The idea that Golden State should have blown up their offensive identity to accommodate Kuminga is patently absurd.

And yet that argument persists.

If those folks were to skip the YouTube highlights and ignore the box score and watch the actual games, a much different reality emerges.

This is the exact same Kuminga. He just has a greener light and weaker opponents.

So let’s pump the brakes on the Springfield induction.

Kuminga is playing well, but he dropped these numbers against the Washington Wizards (twice) and the Portland Trail Blazers. The Wizards are currently operating as a basketball-themed tax write-off — they’re doing everything in their power to lose as often as possible.

And against the Blazers on Sunday, Kuminga scored 11 of his 20 points in the fourth quarter of a game that was already a blowout. It’s garbage-time heroics masquerading as a superstar turn. Just like old times.

Watch the tape. Guys are still blowing past him on defense. The ball still sticks in his hands on offense. It’s the exact same stuff that drove Steve Kerr to the point of a breakdown.

But, again, the dunks are cool.

To be fair, there’s a lot there for Atlanta to like. He’s a pretty good player.

“He is really focused on moving the ball and being unselfish,” Hawks coach Quin Snyder gushed last week.

Man, where have we heard that before?

Oh, right. That’s the exact same thing Kerr said during Kuminga’s five-game hot streak to start the year, right before he reverted to form and the relationship cratered.

Maybe Atlanta is the perfect basketball utopia for Kuminga. Maybe he’ll shoot 67 percent from the floor for the rest of his natural life. Or maybe, just maybe, the guy is just the undisputed king of first impressions.

It’ll be a while before Atlanta plays a team with a pulse, so the hype train will probably keep chugging along. The fans can keep chanting their sarcastic “Thank yous” to the Bay Area all they want.

But let’s check back in at the end of the campaign, when the opponents are serious and more than athleticism is required to win.

What will Atlanta fans still be chanting then?