Jordan Poole has only recently become a rising young star. golden state warriors. Poole was a key scorer off the bench during the team’s unexpected run to the 2022 NBA Championship and was also Golden State’s biggest success story with its “two timelines” approach. Whatever the Warriors’ future looks like around their aging core from their dynasty days, Poole figured he would be a big part of it.
Less than two years later, pool play declined dramatically. After a disappointing 2022-2023 season, the Warriors traded Poole this summer. washington wizards For Chris Paul. It’s unusual for a team to trade a player in his early 20s for a player in his late 30s, but it speaks to how much trust between Poole and Golden State has eroded. Since arriving in the capital playing for the worst team in the league, Poole’s play has only gotten worse. At this point, he is widely considered to be one of the NBA’s biggest punchlines.
Two major events occurred during the rise and fall of pools. He signed a four-year contract worth up to $128 million with the Warriors in October 2022. Around the same time, Poole was also punched in the face by Green during practice. The incident gained even more attention after the video somehow leaked and quickly went viral.
This is a graph that shows how the pool affects the court based on a metric called DPM (Daily Plus Minus). This statistic is intended to understand a player’s value above or below average per 100 possessions and to predict future player value. Click here for a detailed explanation of DPM. The main thing to know is that this is one of the most reliable publicly available metrics for understanding NBA player performance, and this graph is not pool-friendly.
This season in Washington was particularly embarrassing for Poole. He has had many high-profile low-light plays. He looked careless in the huddle, attempted 1-for-5s, showboated and had shots blocked, forgot the shot clock rule, and threw alley-oop passes off the backboard. While down 20 points. The Wizards went 9-40 on the year in the first season of a major teardown and rebuild. It’s not just Poole’s fault that Washington is this bad, but he’s also not doing anything to improve the Wizards’ situation.
On Sunday against the Suns, Poole made 1 of 7 field goals and scored four points in 20 minutes. He made 6-of-21 shots (including 2-of-14 from 3-point range) on Friday against the Heat, and also made some low-light shots.
There’s clearly a lot to analyze about the drastic drop in pool performance.
Being knocked down by a teammate during practice must have affected Poole’s mental approach. And the virality of the video certainly only made things worse. While some may argue that Poole stopped giving his all once he got paid, there’s also something to be said about the state of the team around him in his final season in Golden State. With the departure of Gary Payton II, a key defender who could cover Poole’s defensive weaknesses is removed from the backcourt rotation.
Poole wasn’t the only Warriors player whose form has declined since their 2022 championship appearance. Andrew Wiggins has been a shell this season, and Kevon Looney hasn’t been that great either. These are players like Poole who should have been at the peak of their careers but instead saw a crater in their play. Wiggins and Looney can barely play at this point in the season.
The Wizards knew they were struggling from the beginning of the year. That won’t change even if Poole has his best season. Still, there was some thinking going into this year that Poole could bounce back, put up huge scoring numbers in a larger offensive role, and become a valuable trade asset to other teams. That hasn’t happened. Instead, the pool sank deeper and deeper into punchline territory. There is currently no trade market available for him to make a max deal.
Poole is only 24 years old. He has plenty of time to get his NBA career back on track. This year has been his worst, and unfortunately that has been the case ever since Green soaked him in the face.
