The Golden State Warriors are part of the West Group C for the In-Season Tournament. Grouped up with several young and exciting teams, Stephen Curry and co. have a 1-1 record so far. Before their ongoing contest against the San Antonio Spurs, Jonathan Kuminga revealed that the $500,000 cash prize for every member of the winning team wasn’t a motivating factor for the Bay Area side.
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After defeating the Oklahoma City Thunder, Steve Kerr’s boys suffered a tough 101-104 loss against the Minnesota Timberwolves. With the Sacramento Kings and the Wolves having better records, the Warriors are in desperate need of a win in order to have a shot at advancing past the group stages.
Prior to the Warriors-Spurs bout, Jonathan Kuminga spoke to a few members from NBCS. During the pregame interview, JK revealed that the members of the team weren’t motivated by the extra money. Instead, the Warriors would be approaching it as just another matchup.
“That’s a lot of money though but I haven’t heard nobody really like talking about it. Look man, we’ve been having good energy, positive energy. We all expect to win every single day. And once we win in the right way, that’s just going to open up everything. That’s going to help us win more games. I haven’t seen nobody complaining about losing in-season and stuff like that. Nobody thinking about the money. We all want to win so we can have a good break,” Kuminga revealed.
LeBron James and others are motivated by the $500,000 unlike Jonathan Kuminga, Stephen Curry, and Co.
$500,000 is a huge sum. It is great enough an incentive to get players motivated to win this newly-introduced In-Season Tournament. Unlike the Golden State Warriors, who are apparently not doing it for the money, LeBron James and Zion Williamson admitted the opposite.
After the Los Angeles Lakers came back from a 14-point deficit to defeat the Phoenix Suns 122-119, LeBron revealed that additional cash prize motivated his squad.
“Y’all heard that there’s $500,000 on the line, so we’re going for that,” LeBron admitted.
Zion Williamson, after the New Orleans Pelicans’ IST win against the Dallas Mavericks, couldn’t put any more focus on the half-a-million-dollar cash prize.
“500 bands. Come on, man…when you got $500,000 on the line…”
Of course, the addition of the In-Season Tournament has been a great effort by the league to make the regular season more entertaining. Judging from the success that this tournament has witnessed, it won’t be surprising to see the league continue this practice for years to come.
