Brandin Podziemski is not in ESPN's NBA top 100 today. The news, out of ESPN's ranking project, is that he is close enough that people are arguing about it, and that a real jump next season could put him on the list. For Golden State, that sentence carries more freight than a list ever should.
Because here is the thing about ranking season. Nobody in the league admits to reading the lists. Everybody reads the lists.
Why is Brandin Podziemski in the ESPN NBA top 100 conversation?
The framing matters. This is not a snub piece. It is a conditional. He could crack it, the writeup says, if he makes improvements to his game. That is a scout's sentence dressed up as a ranking, and it is more useful than a number, because it names the mechanism instead of the verdict. The evaluation is that the baseline is real and the ceiling is unproven.
Podziemski came into the league as a 2023 first-rounder out of Santa Clara with a reputation built on feel: passing, positioning, rebounding above his size, the connective stuff that shows up on winning teams and almost never shows up on a top-100 list. Connective players get ranked last. They get paid eventually, but they get ranked last.
checked the almanac: draymond green went 35th overall in 2012, spent draft night being described as a tweener with no position, and finished his career as one of the most consequential defenders of his era. the lists are a snapshot, not a verdict.
Where the Warriors sit in ESPN's rankings
Put the week in one frame and the shape of the project gets clearer. This is a wide-angle season for ESPN's rankings, and the noise is doing the usual thing:
| Player or team | Where the rankings have them |
|---|---|
| Victor Wembanyama | No. 2 overall, consensus top three |
| Jalen Brunson | around the No. 25 range, and the reaction was loud |
| Milwaukee Bucks | one top-100 player following the Giannis trade |
| Brandin Podziemski | outside the top 100, in next season's conversation |
That Brunson line is instructive. A Finals MVP who just helped end a 53-year championship drought in New York lands in the mid-20s and the internet lights the building on fire. Rankings measure projected value, not what a man did in June. Fans measure what a man did in June. Those two things will never reconcile, and honestly, the fighting is half the fun of September.
What comes next for Podziemski and Golden State
The improvements implied here are not mysterious. For a guard whose value is built on decision-making and effort, the leap almost always lives in the same two places: shooting that defenses have to respect, and enough on-ball creation that he can run a possession instead of only connecting one. Do both and the top-100 argument ends on its own. Do neither and he stays exactly what he is, which is still a rotation piece on a team with expectations.
And that is the part worth sitting with. Golden State does not need Podziemski to be the 87th best player in the world for vanity. They need the version of him that forces opponents to guard him honestly, because everything that franchise has built for a decade runs on spacing and second-side advantage. A guard who can be helped off is a tax on all of it.
The list is a proxy. The real measurement comes when the games start and the possessions tell on everybody.
What I am watching next: whether his role expands in the preseason rotation, because usage is the tell here. Feel players who get more touches tend to show you the answer quickly, one way or the other.
