Getty Chris Chiozza throws a pass during a bout between the Golden State Warriors and the San Antonio Spurs.
Gary Payton II and Otto Porter Jr. may have been the headliners, but the Golden State Warriors actually lost several members of their championship team this offseason. While the aforementioned bolted for Portland and Toronto, respectively, Nemanja Bjelica returned to Europe, Damion Lee descended upon the Valley of the Sun and Juan Toscano-Anderson went to Los Angeles.
Fast-forward to now and the last ex-Dubs domino has finally fallen.
Per an announcement from the team on Friday, point guard Chris Chiozza has officially put pen to paper on a new deal with the Brooklyn Nets.
Chiozza’s deal with the Nets is said to be of the Exhibit 10 variety — a non-guaranteed, one-year pact for the minimum salary which Brooklyn can convert to a two-way deal. Essentially, it gives him an opportunity to show his stuff during training camp. From there, he’ll have financial incentives to transition to the club’s G League affiliate.
Of course, Chiozza is no stranger in Brooklyn.
Chiozza Has Hooped It Up With the Nets Before
After going undrafted out of Florida in 2018, Chiozza eventually tipped off his pro career with the Washington Wizards summer league outfit. That led to a camp deal with the club before he finally landed with the G League’s Capital City Go-Go. He later earned a 10-day shot with the Houston Rockets.
While he didn’t see any action with the club at that time, he remained in the Rockets system via the Rio Grande Valley Vipers. That eventually led to a rest-of-season deal in Houston and his first handful of NBA appearances.
The following year (2019-20) he was back in DC, this time earning a two-way contract with the Wiz. Although he spent a lot of his time back with the Go-Go that season, he did play briefly in 10 games alongside Bradley Beal and Co. And after the team waived him, he quickly caught on in Brooklyn as a two-way player.
Over the next year and half, across a pair of two-ways and an Exhibit 10, he played in 40 games with the Nets, making three starts and averaging 5.1 points, 3.0 assists and 1.6 rebounds per contest.
That would ultimately lead to his two-way spot with the Warriors last season.
Chiozza Struggled When He Was on the Court for Golden State
Throughout his young career, Chiozza has struggled to connect consistently from the floor, and the situation definitely didn’t improve with the Dubs. In fact, his overall field-goal percentage in the Bay was just 29.6% and he wasn’t much better from deep, where he connected at a 32.1% clip.
As a result of that, the number of young mouths that Steve Kerr had to feed and the emergence of Payton, Chiozza was rarely called upon to play meaningful minutes during his short Warriors stay. And once the playoffs rolled around, he was ineligible to play due to his two-way status.
In total, he appeared in 34 games for Golden State in 2021-22, putting up 2.0 points, 1.9 assists and 1.1 rebounds in 10.9 minutes per outing.
At just 5-11 and 175 pounds, he’ll likely be in a perpetual battle to hold down a spot in the league. However, his toughness has never been in question and, clearly, the Nets have seen something in him.