Steph Curry is now the only 2009 NBA Draft pick still with his original team

DeMar DeRozan was traded to the San Antonio Spurs Wednesday, and the move earned Steph Curry a new record.

With DeRozan changing counties, Curry is now the only active player from the NBA Draft class of 2009 to have played his entire career with one team. He’s one of only two to currently have a roster spot with the club that originally drafted him. The other honor goes to Brandon Jennings, who made his triumphant return to the Milwaukee Bucks this spring after bouncing around the league (and world).

It’s enough of an accomplishment for many of these players just to remain in the league as they head into their 10th season as pros. Fourteen of 2009’s 30 first round picks spent the 2017-18 seasons somewhere other than the NBA, including high profile selections like No. 2 Hasheem Thabeet and No. 6 Jonny Flynn:

Even Jennings, the No. 10 pick that year, took the long road back to Milwaukee. He had an explosive rookie campaign that saw him drop 54 points on Curry’s Warriors in just his seventh game as a pro, but struggled to establish himself as more than just a ball-dominant scorer on a series of bad-to-mediocre teams. He went from the Bucks to the Pistons to the Magic to the Knicks and finally to the Wizards, before seemingly washing out of the league in 2017 and accepting a one-year deal with China’s Shanxi Brave Dragons.

He got his release from Shanxi, but spent two months unemployed before the Bucks offered him a spot on their G-League team. Four weeks later, he was promoted back to the main roster, where he nearly notched a triple-double in his return and added some needed depth over the course of 14 games in Milwaukee.

In contrast, Curry’s path has been a straight line. The former Davidson star broke into the league as a gifted shooter and scorer and never really stopped, earning league MVP honors in both 2015 and 2016 while leading the Warriors out of basketball purgatory and to three league titles in the past four seasons. It’s not difficult to see why Golden State has put a premium on keeping him — even well after the expiration dates have come due for several other members of his draft class.

Curry’s tenure in the Bay Area is impressive, but he’s not the only star to be the last man standing on his original team from one of the past decade’s draft classes. John Wall, taken No. 1 overall in the 2010 draft, is still a member of the Washington Wizards. Like Curry, he’s the only active player left in his class to remain with a single team for his whole career.

So what’s the lesson here? It’s that only once-in-a-generation talents has a shot of spending their first decade in the league with the same team — and sometimes, not even then. Players like DeMarcus Cousins, Paul George, James Harden, and Blake Griffin all looked like building blocks from their respective teams, but all wound up being traded when those plans fell through.

For Curry and Wall, their long tenures with the teams that drafted them is a byproduct of their skill — but it’s also attributable to a little bit of luck as well.