Ranking all of Steph’s teammates: #93 — Charlie Bell

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.

#93 — Charlie Bell

Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images

Games: 19 (81st out of 106)
Points per game: 1.7 (T-97th out of 106)
Rebounds per game: 0.9 (98th out of 106)
Assists per game: 0.7 (T-71st out of 106)

No Golden State Warriors fan remembers Charlie Bell for his on-court contributions. He’ll always be remembered for the amnesty clause.

When the the NBA and the Players Association redid the Collective Bargaining Agreement in 2011, they included an amnesty clause to help teams get rid of bad contracts and rebuild successfully.

The provision allowed teams the right to waive one player (between 2011 and 2015), without it impacting their salary cap. In other words, they could waive a player owed $20 million, and while they’d still have to pay that $20 million, it wouldn’t be reflected on the salary cap, and they could spend money elsewhere.

Most teams used the provision to get rid of overpaid players who were no longer very good, but still owed a bit of money. The Warriors, however, used it on Bell, who had only one year and $4 million remaining on his contract.

The Warriors opted to amnesty Bell so that they could have extra money to offer DeAndre Jordan. But Jordan was a restricted free agent, and the Los Angeles Clippers quickly matched the contract that Golden State offered him, leaving the Warriors empty-handed, having squandered a valuable and rare roster-building tool.

Waiving Bell wasn’t a poor decision. His 2010-11 season was wholly uninspiring, as he managed to appear in just 19 games, and shot only 27.9% from the field. No team signed him after the Warriors waived him, marking the end of his career. So getting him off the roster wasn’t a bad thing.

But using the amnesty, when they could have used it on, say, a big contract like Andris Biedrins’, all to make a run at a player they never really had a chance at? An all-time bad move for the franchise, which, at the time, was really saying something.

Of course, that poor organizational decision shouldn’t be held against Bell, and it shouldn’t be used to determine his worth as a player. His play, however, should, and with the Warriors he was very bad.

Bad enough to be Steph Curry’s 93rd-best teammate, but, now that I’ve written all that out, I think I ranked him way too high.