How getting kicked out of an AAU practice shaped Brandin Podziemski into Warriors' $110M man

Brandin Podziemski could have left. That might have been it, right there. He could have turned the key in the ignition, and pulled away from that gym in Wisconsin, seven years ago. You couldn’t have blamed him. His coach had just kicked him out of practice.

Instead, a butterfly flapped its wings, a domino fell, and Podziemski sat at his locker at Chase Center Saturday night as the humble owner of a new $110 million contract. Generational wealth, for a 23-year-old kid from Milwaukee. Enough for his parents, and grandpa, and aunts, and uncles, and all the people he hopped on FaceTime with Friday night after finalizing an extension with the Golden State Warriors, and his future grandkids, too. He does not get here, he knows, without the day Antonio Curro threw him out of the gym.

“The day’s special to me,” Podziemski told the Chronicle, remembering.

It was September 2020, and Podziemski was practicing with Curro’s AAU team at a sweltering gym in Wisconsin dubbed the “Warehouse.” When anyone walked into the Warehouse, they probably noticed 6-foot-8 forward Jalen Johnson, now an All-NBA talent with the Hawks. Or five-star Patrick Baldwin Jr. They did not notice Podziemski, at that time, a talented and precocious young guard with a curly mop. He wanted to be noticed. He was 17, and 17-year-old kids want the world, while understanding little of it.

The body language, that practice, was bad. Podziemski was going through the motions, with the motions of someone who thought he was already better than what was in front of him. So Curro sent him out, and Podziemski spent the entire practice sitting in his car.

He could have left. Instead, he sat. And thought. And thought about if he reallywanted it. And returned to the gym, apologized to Curro, and heard him out.

If you change, Curro told Podziemski, I’ll change your life. If you don’t, you’ll be frustrated.

Podziemski changed.

“It just kinda made me check myself, in a way,” Podziemski said Saturday. “Check my ego. At the time, I just thought I was probably better than I was … just a turning point for me, and just made me realize, like, ‘I’m not good enough to be where I want to be.’

“And so, from that day forward, it just kinda changed my mindset of how I approach the day-to-day process, of how I do things,” he says. “And the rest is history.”

History is complicated. History is a 20-year-old young man dropped in the middle of a splintering dynasty, trying to grow in the space between the cracks. History has continued to pit an unyielding and prevailing self-confidence against how much assertiveness is actually needed in Golden State, with a system and culture that has been in place for over a decade.

“He’s had a couple sound bites that, make me want to run through the wall a little bit once in a while,” joked Curro, a longtime mentor for Podziemski and the CEO of grassroots-basketball organization NY2LA Sports. “It’s one of those where – you see him, you just put your head in your hands. ‘Come on, man.’”

Does Podziemski actually believe he can be better than Stephen Curry? No. The point is he will tryto be. In those days in Wisconsin, Podziemski would try to beat Baldwin’s scores in a shooting drill, as Curro remembered. Always believing he belonged in the room, and seeking out the best guy to prove it.

“I’m fairly certain Brandin Podziemski was born into this world,” Curro said, “with unbelievable confidence.”

Podziemski would not be here without it. But this has bitten him before. Self-confidence bred impatience, in those AAU days, as Podziemski’s recruitment wasn’t gaining much steam amid the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Every missed shot brought visible frustration, because Curro could sense that Podziemski wanted it all now.

So, after Podziemski apologized that September, Curro told him he had to fix his mentality. And, thereby, his effort.

“The thought process was, ‘When you came here, it was almost like you came here to use what we do for yourself, not to embrace the culture and then reap the benefit,’” Curro recalled.

Years later – not that many years later – Podziemski has gone through the same process in Golden State. He was thrown briefly, as Curro recalled, when the Warriors sent him to their G-League affiliate in Santa Cruz in the early days of his rookie year in 2023. He has yo-yo’d in and out of Steve Kerr‘s starting lineups for three seasons, trying to fit behind Klay Thompson and Chris Paul in 2023-24 and next to Jimmy Butler in 2024-25 until a final hint of full spotlight amid the team’s rash of injuries in 2025-26.

Patience, Podziemski said Saturday, is a beautiful thing. He has learned it is hard to obtain. He is getting there at 23, and now has at least four more guaranteed seasons of growing with Golden State laid out in front of him.

“It was a little harder, when I was younger,” Podziemski says Saturday, asked on balancing his confidence with internal expectations of his role in Golden State. “Because, like, when you’re a young player, you obviously want what’s best for the team, especially if they drafted you. But you also want to establish yourself as an individual and show that you’re – worthy to be around.

“And so, you fight that balance of team success and individual success, the feelings that come with both.”

Golden State still needs their 2023 first-round pick to fit in, for whatever the final years of the Curry era bring. But this five-year, $110 million rookie extension is a clear sign, too, that the organization thinks Podziemski is a bridge between the Warriors’ present and whatever is next. He is far from a star-level contributor, but has become a backcourt complement to Curry, having improved as a point-of-attack defender, and as a secondary offensive creator.

“Now, the system fits him and molds around him,” veteran Gary Payton II said Saturday, “as well as he molded around the system.”

The Warriors’ new five-out offensive principles, as Kerr said Saturday, “plays right” into Podziemski’s skill set. That has shown up this preseason. Starting possessions with five players around the perimeter has frequently opened up wide-open lanes for Podziemski to cut into the paint off-ball. He finished plus-18 against Sacramento Saturday, with 14 points and three threes.

Podziemski, Payton said, will have to re-mold himself again once Curry and Draymond Green are no longer in Warriors uniforms. That brought the question: does the 33-year-old Payton, as much a Golden State lifer as any role player on the Warriors’ roster, view Podziemski as a player who can take the torch once the old guard is gone?

“Well, yeah – today,” Payton pointed, referencing Podziemski’s performance against Sacramento. “He looks like he’s one of those torch guys that, when that does happen, he’s going to have the chance to run a team. If it’s not here, it’s going to be somewhere else, for sure.

“So it’s set up for him right now to take over, when those guys go,” Payton continued. “And, him and Yaxel (Lendeborg), and the rest of this young core. So, if everything goes well and he stays focused … it’ll be his for the taking.”

Not much changed, once Podziemski’s extension was finalized Friday night. He told Curro he had a game the next day. He glided into the locker room silently, postgame, after a few obligatory happy-I’m-here press-conference remarks. At 14 years old, Podziemski had told his parents that he’d make it to the NBA, if they let him switch from baseball to playing basketball.

Someone asked him, at the postgame podium, if he ever saw himself – back in eighth grade – being the player he is now.

“I’d like to think so,” Podziemski said.

Unbelievably confident, as Curro said. Always. But Podziemski has learned to shape it, after that day leaving the Warehouse. And the Warriors need it, long-term.

“What I will say is, to those that doubt him, to those that continue – please,” Curro said, who talks to Podziemski daily. “Because all it does is add fuel to the fire. And all he does is keep growing. And all I do is use it as motivation. So he is a highly confident, elite-character human being that has done nothing but fought for everything he’s ever done.

“Was not born with a silver spoon,” Curro continued. “Was not given everything in life. He has fought for it. He has grinded for it. He has earned every single dollar that was just given to him. He has been doubted repeatedly. He has been vilified for no reason by the social-media experts … it is a complete, like, poor analysis to not understand what he brings to the table, on the court. And does he make mistakes? Yeah.

“Are there 23-year-olds out there that don’t?”

Subscribe

There’s more to San Francisco with the Chronicle. Subscribe today for just 25¢.

This article originally published at How getting kicked out of an AAU practice shaped Brandin Podziemski into Warriors’ $110M man.