Although the No. 7 seed Golden State Warriors upset the Houston Rockets in the first round of the NBA playoffs last season, five games into the Conference Semifinals is far from where they wanted to end their season.
Any team with future Hall of Famer Stephen Curry on the roster has legitimate championship aspirations. Still, with six-time All-Star Jimmy Butler preparing for his first full season in The Bay, as well as Draymond Green coming off his ninth All-Defensive team honor, expectations are sky-high for the Warriors.
With all the household names that play at the Chase Center, there is a budding star who not only believes he will one day be among those pillars of the franchise, but also believes that this will be the season that he can crack the starting five and produce alongside them.
When NBC Sports Bay Area’s Kerith Burke asked Brandin Podziemski about potentially taking the next step to become a full-time starter on “Dubs Talk,” the 22-year-old going into his third NBA season answered confidently.
“Yeah, I think so,” Podziemski said. “I think selfishly, everybody wants to be a starter, but it comes down to what’s best for the team at that moment and in that game, so I think I work and prepare and do those things in the summer to showcase that I am a starter and that I belong and that I can be a household name for the Warriors, and that’s always my goal and what I look forward to. But like I said, the team comes first. Whatever Steve [Kerr] and the team thinks is best is what we do and that’s what I’ve been ok with.”
Podziemski put up 11.7 points, 5.1 rebounds, 3.4 assists, and 1.1 steals per game last season across 64 games played (33 of which were starts). He did so on a 53.7 percent eFG%, which adjusts conventional field goal percentage to account for the higher value of 3-pointers.
Be the first to comment