Ranking all of Steph’s teammates: #98 — Ognjen Kuzmić

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.

#98 — Ognjen Kuzmić

Photo by Noah Graham/NBAE via Getty Images

Games: 37 (T-63rd out of 106)
Points per game: 0.9 (102nd out of 106)
Rebounds per game: 1.0 (T-93rd out of 106)
Assists per game: 0.2 (T-97th out of 106)

Ognjen Kuzmić will not be remembered as a great Warrior, or even a great NBA player. But he will be remembered as an NBA champion.

The 7’1 center was a member of the 2014-15 Warriors team that won the NBA Finals, and while he didn’t make it onto the court for any Finals games — or any playoff games that year, for that matter — his ring still counts the same.

Kuzmić was drafted 52nd overall in the 2003 NBA Draft, which is a spot where many players don’t ever even play a game. So his two-year career can be seen as good in that regard, even if his play emphatically was not.

He only got on the court for 37 games and 164 minutes in those two years, with his best statistical game being a 6-point, 7-rebound showing during the final game of his rookie year, when the Warriors were resting a lot of key players in a meaningless game.

If you squint, you can see a big improvement in his rookie and sophomore years. Sure, the per-game stats weren’t good, but he bumped his shooting percentage from 38.5% up to 66.7%. Progress!

But that would be the end of his NBA career. A month after winning an NBA championship, Kuzmić signed a deal with a Greek team, and has been playing in Europe ever since.

We’ll remember him for:

1. His nice smile.
2. The fact that his teammates seemed to really like him.
3. Being the only Warrior since Kosta Perović listed as taller than 7-feet.
4. Being Steph Curry’s 98th-greatest teammate.