Player card
- Team/status: officially acquired in the 2026 multi-team transaction; standard-roster core.
- Position: official roster label F-C; likely PF/C on major platforms, to be verified.
- Age/experience: 25 during the season; entering NBA Year 7.
- Depth role: defensive backup at C/PF sharing the reserve five minutes with Quinten Post, 15-minute base role.
- 2025-26: 58 GP/13 starts for Detroit, 22.7 MPG; .550 FG, .756 FT, 0.7 3PM, 10.0 PTS, 5.0 REB, 1.1 AST, 0.3 STL, 1.6 BLK, 1.2 TO. ESPN stats, accessed 2026-07-18
2026-27 base projection
| GP | MPG | FG% (FGA) | FT% (FTA) | 3PM | PTS | REB | AST | STL | BLK | TO |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 64 | 15 | .545 (4.8) | .750 (1.5) | 0.4 | 6.8 | 3.9 | 0.8 | 0.3 | 1.0 | 0.8 |
Correction 2026-07-18 Trimmed from 18 to 15 base minutes. Memphis paid Quinten Post $30 million on a three-year offer sheet Golden State declined to match, which is not consistent with Post taking nine minutes behind Stewart. The two now split the backup-five work, with Boozer at power forward capping the number of big-man minutes available to either. Stewart's per-minute block rate is unchanged; only the workload assumption moved. Hoops Rumors, 2026-07
Nine-category: top 140-195 per game, with much higher usefulness in a blocks build. Points: fringe unless minutes rise. Dynasty: contender specialist; at 25, still holds value, but Edey/Post/Boozer cap the stable Memphis role.
Range and risks
- Strengths: blocks, FG%, modest threes for a big and low turnovers.
- Liabilities: low assists/steals, middling FT% and minute congestion.
- Floor/base/ceiling: 12-minute third center / 18-minute defensive reserve / 25-minute starter during Edey absences with roughly 11/7/1.7 blocks.
- Branches: an Edey restriction creates the largest upside; Post's new contract prevents assuming every backup-center minute belongs to Stewart.
The NBA transaction report establishes Stewart's Memphis arrival but offers no rotation promise. His 1.6 blocks in only 22.7 minutes support the specialist case; the model's lower counting line is almost entirely a minute adjustment. NBA.com, updated 2026-07-09
Confidence
| Component | Label | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Roster | High | Newly acquired standard player. |
| Minutes | Medium | Clear skill fit, crowded center depth. |
| Rate | High | Multi-year NBA blocks/rebounding baseline. |
| Availability | Medium-high | 58 games last year; no current restriction found. |
Sources
- Official Memphis roster — accessed 2026-07-18.
Career record
Pre-NBA: Washington, one season (2019-20) as a one-and-done. He went 17.0 PTS / 8.8 REB / 2.1 BLK on .570 FG across 32 games, earning All-Pac-12 first team and the conference all-freshman team. The block rate and the interior finishing were the draft profile; the shooting range was not, which makes the later three-point experiment a genuinely acquired skill rather than a latent one. Draft: 2020, first round, 16th overall, Portland Trail Blazers — traded to Detroit two days later (November 24, 2020) alongside Trevor Ariza and a future second in the Christian Wood deal, so he has never played a game for the team that drafted him.
| Season | Age | Team | GP | MPG | PTS | REB | AST | STL | BLK | 3PM | FG% | FT% | TO |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-21 | 19 | DET | 68 | 21.4 | 7.9 | 6.7 | 0.9 | 0.6 | 1.3 | 0.3 | .553 | .696 | 1.0 |
| 2021-22 | 20 | DET | 71 | 25.6 | 8.3 | 8.7 | 1.2 | 0.3 | 1.1 | 0.2 | .510 | .718 | 1.2 |
| 2022-23 | 21 | DET | 50 | 28.3 | 11.3 | 8.1 | 1.4 | 0.4 | 0.7 | 1.3 | .442 | .738 | 1.4 |
| 2023-24 | 22 | DET | 46 | 30.9 | 10.9 | 6.6 | 1.6 | 0.4 | 0.8 | 1.5 | .487 | .753 | 1.4 |
| 2024-25 | 23 | DET | 72 | 19.9 | 6.0 | 5.5 | 1.7 | 0.4 | 1.4 | 0.2 | .559 | .759 | 0.9 |
| 2025-26 | 24 | DET | 58 | 22.7 | 10.0 | 5.0 | 1.1 | 0.3 | 1.6 | 0.7 | .550 | .756 | 1.2 |
| Career | 365 | 24.3 | 8.8 | 6.8 | 1.3 | 0.4 | 1.2 | 0.6 | .514 | .737 | 1.2 |
All six seasons were played in Detroit; the Memphis move came via the 2026 trade that sent him for three second-round picks, so there is no multi-team season in the record. ESPN and StatMuse agree on every season row; StatMuse's career aggregate reads slightly higher on points (about 9.1), and the career line above follows ESPN.
Fantasy history: Season-end nine-category ranks are not verifiable from public sources for Stewart, and none is asserted here. The category shape is legible from the lines regardless, and it has inverted once already. Through 2021-22 he was a rebounds-and-efficiency big with useful but unspectacular blocks. The 2022-23 and 2023-24 seasons repositioned him as a stretch four — 1.3 and 1.5 threes per game — and that version cost him dearly in categories, because the added threes came with a collapse in field-goal percentage to .442 and .487 and a drop in block rate. The 2024-25 and 2025-26 seasons reverted him to the rim: threes back down, FG% back above .550, and blocks at career highs of 1.4 and 1.6. That last version is the fantasy-relevant one, a blocks-and-percentage specialist with almost nothing in steals or assists. Points leagues are consistently poor for him at every version of the role, since he has never averaged more than 11.3.
Durability: GP by season — 68, 71, 50, 46, 72, 58. The middle dip is partly health: a left shoulder impingement diagnosed March 9, 2023 carried a three-to-four week timeline and closed out that season, and knee trouble that surfaced in the 2025 playoffs against New York cost him multiple postseason games. The larger and more repeatable availability tax is disciplinary, and this is the part the confidence table above understates. Stewart has an extensive suspension record: two games in November 2021 after the LeBron James incident, three games in February 2024 following an assault charge, and further one-, two- and seven-game suspensions across 2024 through 2026. The seven-game ban was levied for the February 9, 2026 Pistons-Hornets brawl, cited as leaving the bench area, aggressively entering an on-court altercation and fighting, with the length explicitly based in part on his repeated history of unsportsmanlike acts. That single suspension accounts for roughly a third of the 24 games he missed in 2025-26. No source checked attributes the remaining 2025-26 absences to a named injury, so they are left unexplained rather than guessed.
Trajectory: Stewart's arc is unusual in that his best fantasy version is his most recent one despite his counting stats peaking three years ago. The 2022-23 and 2023-24 stretch-four detour produced his highest scoring and minutes but was the worst use of him, and Detroit correctly abandoned it. Since reverting to a rim role his per-36 block rate has climbed to roughly 2.5 in 2025-26 from 2.2 the prior year and under 1.0 during the stretch experiment — a real skill re-emergence, not a minutes artifact, and the single reason he holds any standard-league claim. The countervailing trend is rebounding, which has fallen every year since 2021-22, from 8.7 to 8.1 to 6.6 to 5.5 to 5.0, and the per-36 rate has slid alongside it, so the decline is genuine rather than positional. At 25 he is squarely in his prime and the skills are stable, which means 2026-27 is a pure minutes question behind Edey, Post and Boozer. The suspension history is the underpriced risk: it is long, escalating in severity, and the league has now stated on the record that future discipline will be weighted by that history.
Career sources: ESPN career stats · StatMuse season-by-season per game · Wikipedia — Washington career, draft, injuries, suspensions · NBA.com — suspensions from Pistons-Hornets altercation · ESPN — knee injury, 2025 playoffs
Open questions
- Can Stewart share the floor with Edey or Boozer often enough to exceed 20 minutes?
- Which big closes defensive games?