Ranking all of Steph’s teammates: #85 — Zach Norvell Jr.

On June 25, 2009, the Golden State Warriors drafted Steph Curry. Ten years and 16 days later, the Oklahoma City Thunder traded Russell Westbrook to the Houston Rockets. With that move, Curry moved to second in the NBA for longest tenure with his current team. The only player he sits behind is Udonis Haslem, though that feels like a technicality. At this point, Haslem is essentially an assistant coach for the Miami Heat, having appeared in just 43 games and played fewer than 300 minutes over the last four seasons combined.

During his time in the Bay Area, Curry has had 106 teammates who have appeared in at least one game. Some played in exactly one game, while others played in hundreds. Some never actually played in a game that Curry was active for, while others formed historically great partnerships with him.

And I’m ranking all 106, one a day, over the course of three months.

Players are ranked — and stats are shown — based only on their time as Curry’s teammate. How good/bad they were in other organizations doesn’t matter. How good/bad they were on pre-2009-10 Warriors teams doesn’t matter.

To see all of the rankings thus far, you can click on the “Ranking Steph’s teammates” tag at the top of the article.

#85 — Zach Norvell Jr.

Photo by Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images

Games: 3 (T-100th out of 106)
Points per game: 3.3 (83rd out of 106)
Rebounds per game: 1.7 (T-79th out of 106)
Assists per game: 1.0 (T-58th out of 106)

Zach Norvell Jr. has had a very short NBA career thus far, and it feels like his entire career has involved both the Golden State Warriors and Los Angeles Lakers at the same time.

After going undrafted in 2019, Norvell signed a two-way deal with the Lakers and joined their Summer League team. The Lakers played the Warriors three times across the two Summer Leagues.

He then joined the Lakers for training camp, where four of their six preseason games came against the Warriors.

When the regular season came around, he spent most of the time in the G League, and played just two games for the Lakers before he was waived. The Warriors signed him to a 10-day contract, just in time for him to make his Golden State debut on February 8 . . . against the Lakers.

In all, Norvell has played 19 NBA games between Summer League, preseason, and the regular season, and 8 of those 19 games have been matches between the Warriors and Lakers. It’s almost the only matchup he knows!

Anyway, Norvell’s time with Golden State didn’t last long. He got three games in before his contract expired, at which point he joined the Santa Cruz Warriors in the G League. The Warriors seemed to like him, and it was entirely possible that they were planning on offering him another 10-day contract at some point.

His time with the Warriors wasn’t particularly good, though the team was bad enough that it’s hard to judge him properly. His first game was pretty nice, as he had 7 points, 4 rebounds, 2 assists, and 2 steals. But in his last two games, he combined to have just 3 points, 1 rebound, and 1 assist.

The Warriors like their shooters, and Norvell is decent in that regard, having averaged 38.7% from beyond the arc in the G League. But in Golden State, he had a problem finding any alternate routes to scoring. He missed all 3 of his shots inside the arc and, in fact, hasn’t made a two-pointer in his career. A five game sample size is, of course, tiny, but it’s all we’ve got to judge him on. He also shot just one free throw with the Warriors, and that was only because of a technical foul.

He has some tools, and it will be interesting to see if he can carve out an NBA career when the coronavirus is over. But in his short stint with the Warriors, he was a one-dimensional player whose one dimension wasn’t particularly good.

He also never played with Steph Curry, who was injured during Norvell’s entire Dubs tenure. Still, he’s Curry’s 85th-best Warriors teammate.