If you’re a guard with the Golden State Warriors during the Stephen Curry era, you better know how to make a big splash. That means both knocking down pure jumpers from way downtown, and also making winning plays that get the fanbase behind you and wins up on the schedule. You make enough splashes and you start making waves.
At GSW media day, fourth year guard Brandin Podziemski walked up to the podium on Monday and the first thing anybody noticed was the waves in his hair. We’re talking fresh waves brushed in and laid down, the kind of look that leads me to believe he’s a young man who spent the offseason with a durag, a soft brush, and a whole lot of patience.
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Then he started talking, and the second thing I realized was how differently he was approaching his words than last year.
If you’ve followed this young fella for any amount of time, you know that’s a different Podz at the mic. I think he knows exactly why, going back to last October. Podz sat down with The Athletic’s Nick Friedell and laid out, with zero hesitation, where he saw himself in the Warriors’ family tree: “When they leave this thing, they got to leave it with somebody,” he said. “How can I have their trust? And they can go to [owner] Joe [Lacob] and [general manager] Mike [Dunleavy] and be like, ‘Hey, we want to leave it with him. He’s going to continue what we’re leaving.'”
He kept going. “So, I think about that all time, and I set myself up in that position to have that. And there’s a lot of other things than just skill that you need to be in that position.”
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Unfortunately, the internet heard a third-year guard publicly measuring the drapes in a house where Steph Curry and Draymond Green still pay the mortgage. And that very same internet responded the way the internet responds to everything, which is loudly and without nuance. They booed this man at a baseball game!!
By March, Podz was walking it back a little, though only a little. In an NBC Sports Bay Area article by Nick Avila entitled “Warriors’ Brandin Podziemski explains viral comments were taken out of context” he said:
I think I could have worded them a little bit differently, but I also think how it’s perceived on the internet is a little taken out of context. Your biggest strength can be your biggest weakness and I think it’s gotten me to this point and obviously with anything in life, there’s going to be pushback, people aren’t going to like you for what you say or what you do. But I’m just going to stick with it. It’s worked.
I never hated the quote personally. I grew up in East Oakland hooping and I learned early that sometimes you gotta talk it while you’re still learning to walk it. Speak it, believe it, receive it.
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Ambition is fine, but I think the problem was the venue. In this franchise the torch gets passed down generationally on the floor, in the fourth quarter, when Draymond is barking coverages and Steph needs somebody to make the extra pass land somewhere useful. What I heard on Monday was a 23-year-old who figured that out without giving up the part of himself that said it in the first place. The confidence is still there but he knows he already put it out there on the microphone and now it’s time to put it out there on the hardwood.
The clock he was talking about last fall is real, too. Curry turned 38 in March and Draymond turned 36 the same month. When Podz talked about “when they leave this thing,” I’m guessing he was just doing math out loud. After watching a who’s who of young Warriors prospects disappear off the roster like a David Blaine magic trick, Podz should understand how quickly “future of the franchise” can become “former Warrior.” Jordan Poole, Jonathan Kuminga, Trayce Jackson-Davis, and James Wiseman are all different players with different circumstances and the same result: none of them became the guy Steph and Draymond left this thing with.
So now he’s done talking about it (at least for the cameras) and I think that’s the right call. It also means the only place left to put all that ambition is the box score, and every night this season people are going to look at it and ask whether the youngster who wanted the keys actually knows how to drive.
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I tried to get waves in junior high school. It’s a lot of work man, I’ll tell ya. I’m sure anyone who’s ever had waves will tell you that the consistent brushing is the whole thing, morning and night, and the week you get lazy with it your head starts looking whupped.
I have a feeling trust with Steph and Draymond works the exact same way. If Podz wants them walking into Joe and Mike’s office someday to say leave it with him he just has to make the right play, sprint the defensive rotation, knock down the big shot, and come back tomorrow and do it again. That’ll be wavy, baby.
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