{"id":110783,"date":"2024-12-05T19:11:12","date_gmt":"2024-12-06T00:11:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/?p=110783"},"modified":"2024-12-06T10:26:04","modified_gmt":"2024-12-06T15:26:04","slug":"warriors-kerr-podziemski","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2024\/12\/05\/warriors-kerr-podziemski\/","title":{"rendered":"Warriors Steve Kerr Stresses Speedy Development for Sophomore Guard"},"content":{"rendered":"

Amid a\u00a0<\/span>five-game slide<\/span><\/a>, the longest of Golden State’s season <\/span>so far<\/span>, Warriors head coach\u00a0<\/span>Steve Kerr<\/span><\/a>\u00a0has expressed numerous frustrations of late. His frustrations have extended to his second-year guard,\u00a0<\/span>Brandin Podziemski<\/span><\/a>, and his development this year. While some of it is love, it’s not all glowing remarks, which is<\/span> fair to say, as Kerr spoke about Podz this week. <\/span><\/p>\n

Warriors Steve Kerr Stresses Speedy Development for Sophomore Guard<\/h2>\n

Warriors Head Coach Steve Kerr Needs Brandin Podziemski to ‘Speed up the Process’<\/h3>\n

Podziemski is clearly having a tough go at this season. It’s his second year with the Warriors and second in the NBA. While he has missed a couple of games along the way, Podziemski’s stats have dropped from where they were his rookie year. Last season, he averaged 9.2 points, 5.8 rebounds, 3.7 assists, and shot 45% from the field and 38% from three. His field goal and three-point percentage have dropped the most of all his stats (38% and 21% this season), and while the rest of his numbers this season (8.0\/5.0\/3.5) aren’t too far off from last, that’s the point\u2014they haven’t improved much.<\/p>\n

Suffice it to say Podziemski is struggling\u2014not just with his numbers\u2014 and the evidence is enough for his coach to publicly call him out on it, as\u00a0<\/span>Kerr did in a postgame press conference<\/span><\/a> following the Warriors latest 119-115 loss to the\u00a0<\/span>Denver Nuggets<\/span><\/a>\u00a0just two days ago. For Podziemski’s sake, hopefully, he heard what his coach said and took it to heart.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

“Podz’s is a hell of a player, but he needs to, and I’ve told him this, he needs to be a smart player. He’s one of our guys whose capable of making really good decisions.” Kerr continued to speak on a couple of sloppy plays on the floor. “He cannot be that guy, and he kept fouling jump shooters. So, I love Brandin, he’s a hell of a player, he’s got a hell of a future ahead of him, but I hope he watches this clip of me talking…he’s gotta be a smart, tough, decision maker…that’s his next step.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Podz Is In the Perfect Spot to Enact Improvement<\/h3>\n

Since his excellent overall performance in his rookie campaign last year, Podziemski has been high on the list of players the Warriors organization loves and wants to keep long-term. Ownership had expressed to Podziemski over the summer that he is not in their trade plans. His name was <\/span>being floated<\/span> around those waters during the offseason.\u00a0<\/span>Kerr<\/span><\/a>\u00a0has also echoed those sentiments, repeatedly encouraging and complimenting Podziemski’s game. On an\u00a0<\/span>appearance with\u00a0<\/span><\/a>95.7 The Game<\/span><\/a><\/em>\u00a0recently, a sports radio show in San Francisco, Kerr stressed that despite Podziemski’s early season struggles, Kerr loves his game but needs to see more.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

“…He\u2019s such an important player for us, but he\u2019s a typical young player…We just need Brandin to speed up the process.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The advantage for Podziemski is that his age does play a factor, and a good one, too. He showed great promise and potential in year one. In year two, he’s learning to find himself as an NBA player and play the game right. Kerr used the word smart<\/em> during that presser. Given that he’s only in his sophomore season, Podziemski’s development leash is longer. If he were in the last year of his rookie contract, things might be much different in that regard. So, as much as Kerr would like his youngster’s process to quicken, thankfully, this issue is being brought to light now and not a few years from now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Amid a\u00a0five-game slide, the longest of Golden State’s season so far, Warriors head coach\u00a0Steve Kerr\u00a0has expressed numerous frustrations of late. His frustrations have extended to his second-year guard,\u00a0Brandin Podziemski, and his development this year. While some of it is love, it’s not all glowing remarks, which is fair to say, as Kerr spoke about Podz […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5081,"featured_media":110784,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1608,25,62],"tags":[48978,528],"class_list":["post-110783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-basketball","category-warriors","category-nba","tag-brandin-podziemski","tag-steve-kerr"],"modified_by":"Eamon Cassels, Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5081"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110783"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110783\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":110864,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110783\/revisions\/110864"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}