Team: Golden State Warriors · Age: 23 · Position: PG/SG · Status: confirmed contract · As of: 2026-07-18
2026-27 median projection
| GP | MPG | FG% | FT% | 3PM | PTS | REB | AST | STL | BLK | TO |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 76 | 32.0 | .452 | .802 | 2.3 | 16.1 | 5.8 | 4.5 | 1.1 | 0.2 | 1.9 |
Nine-cat: top-70 to top-105. Points: B+, with top-65 to top-95 potential because minutes, rebounds, and assists travel well. Dynasty: 8.0/10. Opening-night allocation: 32 minutes.
Role and evidence
Podziemski played all 82 games in 2025-26 and averaged 13.8 points, 5.1 rebounds, 3.7 assists, 1.1 steals, and 1.9 threes in 28.5 minutes with .455 FG and .797 FT (ESPN). The projected depth chart starts him beside Curry and uses him as the backup point guard, a dual role that protects minutes even after Butler returns.
His fantasy case is volume more than one elite category. He rebounds unusually well for a guard, limits his turnovers relative to creation, and can reach useful threes without a damaging percentage. Blocks remain close to zero, and his ceiling depends on increased on-ball responsibility rather than merely playing 34 minutes as a fifth option.
FantasyPros displayed an ECR of 44 with an expert range of 29-75 at access time, but the page's season labeling was not sufficiently clear to treat that as clean 2026-27 consensus. This desk's lower median preserves room for Butler's midseason return and for Melton to handle guard possessions.
Range
- Ceiling: Curry misses another large block, Podziemski approaches 18/6/6 with 2.5 threes, and he finishes inside the top 55.
- Median: stable 32-minute combo role, balanced counting stats, and no single league-winning category.
- Floor: 27-29 minutes after a major acquisition, with Butler and Curry healthy enough to keep assists near 3.5; outside the top 120 in nine-cat.
Career record
Pre-NBA: Two college seasons at two schools. At Illinois in 2021-22 he barely played — 16 games, 4.3 minutes, 1.4 points on .421 from the field and .231 from three. He transferred to Santa Clara and started all 32 games in 2022-23, averaging 19.9 points, 8.8 rebounds, 3.7 assists, 1.8 steals, and 0.5 blocks in 36.0 minutes on .483 from the field, .438 from three, and .771 at the line. That season made him WCC co-Player of the Year (shared with Drew Timme), WCC Newcomer of the Year, and first-team All-WCC; he had been Wisconsin Mr. Basketball in 2021. The Santa Clara profile is the one that predicted the pro career — an oversized guard who rebounds like a forward and passes, on real efficiency. Draft: 2023, first round, 19th pick, Golden State Warriors; no draft-night trade.
| Season | Age | Team | GP | MPG | PTS | REB | AST | STL | BLK | 3PM | FG% | FT% | TO |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023-24 | 20 | GSW | 74 | 26.6 | 9.2 | 5.8 | 3.7 | 0.8 | 0.2 | 1.2 | .454 | .633 | 1.2 |
| 2024-25 | 21 | GSW | 64 | 26.8 | 11.7 | 5.1 | 3.4 | 1.1 | 0.2 | 1.8 | .445 | .758 | 1.2 |
| 2025-26 | 22 | GSW | 82 | 28.5 | 13.8 | 5.1 | 3.7 | 1.1 | 0.2 | 1.9 | .455 | .797 | 1.6 |
| Career | 220 | 27.4 | 11.6 | 5.3 | 3.6 | 1.0 | 0.2 | 1.6 | .452 | .757 | 1.3 |
He has spent his entire career with Golden State. Honors: NBA All-Rookie First Team in 2024, and Rising Stars selections in both 2024 and 2025.
Fantasy history: Season-end nine-category finishes are not verifiable from the sources reached in this pass and are not estimated here. The shape is a breadth profile with one structural hole. Rebounds are the differentiator — 5.1 to 5.8 per game from a guard is a top-decile rate at the position and the single reason his category value outruns his scoring. Assists have sat between 3.4 and 3.7 all three years, steals reached 1.1 in each of the last two, and turnovers stayed low relative to his creation load until last season. Blocks are a hard 0.2 in every season and should be treated as a zero rather than a small positive. Field-goal percentage has been stable but unremarkable at .445 to .455, so it neither helps nor hurts. The one genuinely improving category is free-throw percentage, which climbed from .633 as a rookie to .758 to .797; that is now a small plus rather than the meaningful drag it was in year one. Points leagues reward him better than the raw scoring suggests, because rebounds and assists from a guard carry disproportionate weight in those scoring systems and his turnovers are modest.
Durability: 74, 64, 82. The rookie-year absences were scattered rather than structural. The 64 in 2024-25 has one identifiable block: an abdominal injury on December 28, 2024 that cost him 12 games before he returned January 23, 2025. The important entry is what came next — he had left wrist debridement surgery on May 28, 2025 and core muscle surgery on June 12, 2025, two procedures in a single offseason, and then played all 82 games in 2025-26. That is about as clean a durability signal as a young player can produce, and it argues the abdominal problem was resolved rather than managed. There is no chronic pattern to price in going into 2026-27.
Trajectory: Three straight years of real improvement, and the per-36 numbers confirm it is not a minutes illusion — his scoring per 36 went 12.5, then 15.7, then 17.4, while his minutes moved only from 26.6 to 28.5. The mechanism is shot diet and confidence rather than usage handed to him: three-pointers made rose from 1.2 to 1.9 without any collapse in field-goal percentage, which held in a narrow .445 to .455 band across all three seasons. The free-throw climb from .633 to .797 is the most durable individual gain in the profile and is the kind of skill that tends to stick. The one trend running the wrong way is rebounding, where his per-36 rate has fallen every year — 7.9, then 6.9, then 6.4 — so the projection above already assumes he holds last season's rate rather than recovering the rookie-year number, and boards are the category most likely to disappoint if Golden State plays him more often next to Green and Porzingis. At 23 he is still on the rising part of the curve with no aging discount, and he has now demonstrated both the 82-game floor and a steadily expanding offensive role. The realistic 2026-27 read is continued incremental growth rather than a leap, because the leap requires on-ball possessions that Curry and Butler currently own; the paths to a genuine tier jump run through injury above him rather than through further skill development.
Career sources: ESPN career stats · Wikipedia — Brandin Podziemski · NBA.com — All-Rookie First Team, 2024 · NBA.com — 2025 Rising Stars selection
Open questions
- Does Podziemski open as the nominal shooting guard or lead the second unit?
- Can he increase three-point volume without losing his .45-ish FG foundation?
- Who closes when Curry, Melton, Butler, Green, and Porziņģis are all available?