Ranking all of Steph’s teammates: #80 — Charles Jenkins

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.

Games: 98 (28th out of 106)
Points per game: 3.9 (T-77th out of 106)
Rebounds per game: 0.9 (T-98th out of 106)
Assists per game: 2.0 (T-29th out of 106)

I really liked Charles Jenkins. The Warriors took him with the 44th pick in the 2011 NBA Draft, and I was immediately smitten. He seemed so jovial and in love with basketball and being a good teammate. He was usually the smallest guy on the court yet he always looked like he could beat the opposing team’s center in an arm wrestling match.

He had an unusual way of dribbling and penetrating, which I found intriguing to watch. He seemed to only move north-south and never east-west. At the risk of angering every Warriors fan who reads this, there was something about his penetration style that was a little bit like what James Harden does.

Jenkins had some really good moments with the Warriors. He had a few games where he really looked like he’d buck what is expected of a mid-second round pick and blossom into a high quality NBA player. He had his fair share of highlights.

Ultimately, he couldn’t string them together often enough.

Fans had high expectations for Jenkins going into his second year. At the end of his rookie campaign, with the Warriors eliminated from the playoffs, he was given a chance to start and play big minutes. In the final six games of the year he averaged 13.7 points, 9.2 assists, and 1.3 steals per game, and you would’ve been excused for thinking he’d be a big asset as a second-year player.

It didn’t happen. His role was diminished on a much-better Warriors team in 2012-13, and his productivity took a hit. After scoring in double figures 11 times as a rookie, he never scored more than 6 points in 47 games with the Warriors during his sophomore campaign, and he was traded to the Philadelphia 76ers prior to the trade deadline.

After the season ended, so too did his NBA career. He’s been playing overseas ever since, racking up a pair of Adriatic League championships (and winning Adriatic League Finals MVP in 2017), while being Steph Curry’s 80th-best Warriors teammate.