The Golden State Warriors' season-in-review: Jordan Poole
The unfair expectations set by Poole's bonkers preseason, his struggles adjusting to a bench role, his end-of-season run cosplaying Steph Curry, his playoff progression, and more.
Jordan Poole’s grade: A-
Jordan Poole’s regular season:
In the weeks leading up to training camp for the 2021-22 season, Jordan Poole was the favorite to win the Warriors’ starting shooting guard spot while Klay Thompson rehabilitated his torn Achilles tendon. Over the summer, Steve Kerr told The Athletic’s Tim Kawakami that his “gut reaction” was to start Poole and praised the soon-to-be third-year guard:
He’s really on the rise. He’s having a great summer. Our coaches have raved about him and the work he’s putting in this summer. So I think he’s got a great chance to start.
The preseason prior, Kerr had also praised Poole’s work ethic but he was pushed out of the rotation only a few games into the season. Poole eventually forced his way back into the Warriors’ rotation at Brad Wanamaker's expense during the 2020-21 season and then forced his way into the backup point guard role at Nico Mannion’s expense and then capped his season with 17 straight minutes of high-level play in the Warriors’ season-ending loss to the Memphis Grizzlies in the play-in tournament.
But this preseason, Kerr’s praise of Poole felt different. Here’s Kerr on Poole during training camp:
“We were in a position with Jordan a year ago where we weren’t sure if he was going to be able to contribute,” [...] “But through hard work and patience, he’s put himself in a position where he’s going to be a huge part of the team.”
In the Warriors’ first preseason game, Poole validated Kerr’s praise, and then some, with 30 points in 22 minutes with 7 made threes and 5 assists. Here are Poole’s first two shots of the preseason:
The audacity of those two shots pretty much sums up the Jordan Poole Preseason Experience. In five games, Poole averaged 21.8 points in 22.7 minutes a night as well while getting chewed out by Steve Ker for defensive miscues at least once a game. “I’ve told him to stay on me about the little things, [...] we have a mutual agreement,” Poole explained after the Warriors’ preseason opener. Here’s Kerr on Poole’s defense:
What we have to determine is how he holds up defensively with the different lineups. But when you have a guy that explosive, you have to get him on the floor as much as possible. …We know him and Steph play well together. If they can hold up defensively, they’re going to be out there a lot.”
In the first game of the regular season, Poole scored 20 points in 25 minutes against the Los Angeles Lakers but did not play closing minutes. It wasn’t until the Warriors’ third game of the season that Poole had his first bite at closing minutes and this was the only time in the Warriors’ first five games that he crossed the 30-minute threshold.
Although the Warriors racked up wins in the early season, Poole’s insanely efficient shooting preseason did not carry over at first. In Poole’s first 28 games of the season, before he contracted COVID-19, he shot 33.8% from three and only had 9 games where he shot over league-average from deep. In spite of his inconsistent shooting, Poole still averaged 17.9 points a game and played a key role in wins against playoff teams like the Brooklyn Nets, the Toronto Raptors, and the Phoenix Suns. Poole’s most explosive game of the early season was a 33-point night against the Toronto Raptors where he hit 8 of his 11 three-point attempts. You can see highlights from that game below:
It’s not exactly fair to Jordan Poole, but his early-season performance did feel a bit disappointing because of the absurdly high standard he set for himself in the preseason. When Jordan Poole played his last game of the 2021 calendar year, the Warriors had a 23-5 record. But when Poole caught COVID, Klay Thompson was just weeks away from his return and the Warriors proceeded to win four of the five next games that Steph Curry and Draymond Green played, including wins against the Boston Celtics, Memphis Grizzlies, and Phoenix Suns. These factors, as well as a desire to acclimate Poole to his inevitable sixth-man role, made it easier for Steve Kerr to bring Poole off of the bench in the four games prior to Klay’s return.
In that four games, Poole scored 10, 32, 6, and 11 points. It was in a 7-point win against the Miami Heat that Poole dropped 32 points in just 26 minutes, including 18 points in the second half and this vicious in-and-out dribble and dunk past Heat guard, Kyle Lowry:
This game against the Heat was a high point of Poole’s post-COVID winter as Klay Thompson’s return and the role shift it necessitated blunted his momentum. In Thompson’s first 7 games back, Poole shot 36% from the field with two 20-point games in blowouts. Back-to-back games with 5 points and less than 10 field goal attempts against the Detroit Pistons and the Indiana Pacers were a low point for Poole. Here’s Anthony Slater on Poole after the Keifer Sykes-led loss to the Pacers:
Poole went 1 of 7 against the Pacers, missing all five of his 3s. It was his second straight game finishing with only five points. He was visibly frustrated when he was pulled in the fourth quarter and then appeared a bit scattered when he was tossed back in the game in overtime for Thompson, who had hit his minutes’ limit.
Poole then spent most of overtime either wandering around, out of the action or, when it mattered most, he air-balled a wing 3 with 21 seconds left and nailed the side of the backboard on a corner 3 off a designed inbounds play moments later. It’s been a struggle for Poole and it does seem directly related to his role change.
“We’re trying to get him back in a groove,” Kerr said. “So we’ll look at the tape and we’ll try to figure out what we can do to help, but he’s struggling right now.”
“It’s tough,” Curry said. “It’s the nature of the NBA. It’s not a surprise, in terms of his role changing with Klay back. But it’s about maintaining his aggressiveness and confidence in himself that he can make plays and get himself into the game quicker. I’ve never had to do that, so you don’t know what it physically feels like, mentally feels like to find your way coming off the bench. But I just want him to be assertive, be aggressive. Just see the floor the way he can. Know that it’s going to get better as he continues to get the reps.”
Poole followed up the clunker against the Pacers with a 20-point game against the Rockets, but Klay Thompson sat out that game and the next, another 20-point night for Poole. The first game with Klay present where Poole really played with appropriate aggression was a 17-point night against the Dallas Mavericks in a blowout win. Poole seemed to find his footing in the following games and scored 19 and 17 points a game, but that was followed by a soft spot in the schedule that gave way to an ugly stretch of 6 losses in 8 games.
Poole’s worst game of the season came during that stretch; an 0/7 night in a loss to the Dallas Mavericks where he played a season-low 19 minutes, immediately followed by a 1/6 shooting night from deep in a loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves. Klay Thompson missed both of those games, but Steve Kerr started Moses Moody over Poole in those games, which led to this very awkward press scrum on March 2nd:
In the next game of the season — a 23-point game in 26 minutes in a loss to the Dallas Mavericks — Poole kicked off the finest stretch of his career, one that saw him put up numbers eerily identical to a peak-version of Steph Curry. In the final 19 games of the season, Poole averaged 25.4 points, 4.3 rebounds, and 5.5 assists a game on 47/43/92 shooting splits and took nearly 10 threes a game.
It is a credit to Jordan Poole that he turned things around in such dramatic fashion so immediately after his worst games of the season. After a 5-game stretch of 23, 23, 32, 20, and 21 points, Steve Kerr put Poole back in the starting lineup, but this time alongside Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, and Andrew Wiggins until and even after Draymond Green made his return from injury. Poole’s 30-point night against the Milwaukee Bucks, a game where Steph Curry willingly took a backseat and only took 7 shots, was particularly impressive:
In the Warriors’ very next game, Draymond Green made his return and for a brief moment, the vibes were immaculate. You know what happened next — Steph Curry got injured and the Warriors’ season was thrown into disarray. But on that first night without Curry, Jordan Poole showed that he was ready to take on a primary ball-handling role. The Warriors went into halftime down 16 points without Curry and utterly demoralized, but Poole cut a 21-point lead in the third quarter down to 9 points in the five minutes between the end of the third period and the start of the fourth.
The Warriors lost that game and six of their next seven games, but a 38-point night from Poole in a close loss against the Phoenix Suns, followed by a 31-point performance in a comeback victory against the Utah Jazz and saved the Warriors from a tailspin down the Western Conference playoff seeding. Here are some choice moments from those two games:
Steph Curry’s injury and Jordan Poole’s increased offensive burden gave Draymond Green an opportunity to build chemistry with Poole that carried over into the playoffs. Here are some quotes from both players in an Anthony Slater article on their connection:
“I remember early in the year, I’d tell him: ‘Hey, man, I can make the game way easier for you. Slow down a little bit,'” Green said. “Then not playing with him for three months and coming back and seeing, ‘Oh, man, he’s slowed down, and he’s comfortable in everything that he’s doing.'”
That set the stage for Green to test out all of his favorite Curry actions with Poole. Defenses sag off Green, unafraid of his shooting. He’s become an expert at leveraging that against opponents. But he can only do so if he is armed with an off-ball mover and shooter like Curry. For the last seven weeks, Poole has essentially morphed into that. Green noticed it when he got back.
“Now we can add some of that stuff,” Green said. “Because he’s said it himself. He’s not just out there — pew! pew! pew! — running this way and running that way, and I’m coming into a screen about to get an illegal screen because he’s already taken off. Or I’m going into a (dribble hand-off) and he’s back cut because he’s a bat out of hell at every second.”
[...]
“With Steph being out, it just kind of opened up opportunities to get to it,” Poole said. “I don’t know. It just happened. It was super authentic and genuine. We ain’t ever really practiced it. We just kind of got a hang of it in the game.”
“I feel like it’s just really happened over the last month,” Green said. “Me returning from injury, it was probably a blessing that Steph was out. Because if Steph’s not out, then I just go back to doing those things with Steph. The fact that Steph was out, I’m like, all right, here are some of the things we can do. I’d see how teams were guarding him, and I’m like, ‘Oh, this looks familiar, I’ve seen this before. So, we can go through some of these things to free him up.'”
[...]
“All the credit goes to him,” Green said. “He figured out pace and how to slow down, when to go fast, when to bait a guy because I’m trying to get to this. He’s made it a lot easier to play with, play alongside him, and we’re starting to build a pretty good connection.”
Jordan Poole’s statistical profile (career-bests bolded and career-worsts italicized):
76 games played, 30.0 minutes a game, 18.5 points a game, 3.4 rebounds, 4.0 assists, 2.5 turnovers, 0.8 steals, 0.3 blocks, and 2.7 fouls per game.
44.8% FG, 36.4 3P%, 92.5% FT, 59.8 TS% (+3.3% league-average TS), 54.8% EFG (+1.6% league-average EFG).
13.9 FGA, 6.3 3PA, 3.5 FTA
BBREF: 112 ORTG, 110 DRTG, +1.4 +/- on/off per 100 poss., 1.7 VORP, 1.26 WS/48, 26.0% USG.
NBA.com: 112.1 ORTG, 105.5 DRTG, +6.6 net rating, 25.2% USG.
+4.7 DIFF in non-garbage time (85th percentile), 84th percentile usage, 91st percentile PSA, 59th percentile AST%, 36th percentile AST:Usg, 31st percentile TOV% among combos.
+2.70 ORPM, -0.54 DRPM, +2.16 RPM (#87 rank of 557 players).
Despite an aesthetic resemblance between Steph Curry and Jordan Poole’s games, Poole is still ways away from having anywhere near the on-court impact of Curry. As I looked through Poole’s offensive overview on Cleaning the Glass, I found that Poole and Curry rated similarly by percentile in usage and AST, but of course, Curry’s 99th PSA eclipses Poole’s 91st percentile. Poole only ended up 0.3 percentage points below Curry in TS%, and yet, the power of Curry’s gravity and offensive impact is such that he ranks far above Poole in every one of the composite impact metrics.
Curry, for example, ranked #4 in the league in offensive impact per EPM despite a career-worst shooting season with +5.4 OFF. Poole, meanwhile, ranks #41 in EPM’s OFF with just +2.2, despite shooting better at the rim than Curry and tallying nearly identical percentages on midrange jumpers.
Between his second and third seasons, Poole moved up from #207 to #119 in Basketball Reference's BPM, down from #62 to #87 in ESPN’s silly RPM (Kelly Oubre Jr. ranks higher than Poole this season in ORPM, by the way), and up from #154 to #85 in the league per EPM.
What I wish these impact stats had a way of doing is filtering by specific periods of the season. It is impossible, for example, to see if Jordan Poole’s late-season run of Steph Curry/Dame Lillard-level shooting splits late in the season added up to a high-level of offensive impact or whether they were wasted calories, ala Shai Gilgeous-Alexander in Oklahoma City. Poole’s explosive late-season run did not culminate in wins until the Warriors righted the ship right before the playoffs, but it continued into the playoffs and we do have one metric to reference.
Per Basketball Reference’s BPM, Poole registered the 23rd-best OBPM (+2.4) and ranked #29 overall in BPM at +2.8 in the playoffs. We’ll talk more about Poole’s playoffs later on in this article, but for now, that’s an interesting yardstick for measuring the impact of Poole’s 17 points a game on 51/39/91 splits in the playoffs.
Jordan Poole’s shooting profile:
Restricted area: 66.2% on 213 attempts.
Non-restricted area paint: 49.1% on 159 attempts.
Mid-range: 42.6% on 108 attempts.
Left corner 3: 28% on 50 attempts.
Right corner 3: 43.5% on 46 attempts.
Above the break 3: 36.5% on 477 attempts.
Floaters: 42.0% on 81 attempts.
Layups and finger rolls: 61.9% on 372 attempts.
FGA% per total drives: 43.4%
Assisted by: Draymond Green (61), Steph Curry (43), Andrew Wiggins (31), Kevon Looney (28), Juan Toscano-Anderson (24), Otto Porter Jr. (13), Andre Iguodala and Gary Payton II and Nemanja Bjelica (12), Klay Thompson (8), Jonathan Kuminga (7), Damion Lee (5), Chris Chiozza and Quinndary Weatherspoon (1).
FGM% assisted: 54.4%
FGM% unassisted: 45.6%
Jordan Poole is early enough into his career that you can still see dramatic year-to-year changes in his shooting profile. In his sophomore season, only 31.7% of his shots were unassisted, and over a third of his made buckets in the restricted area were unassisted. Poole’s restricted area efficiency in his sophomore season fascinated me — in less than 100 attempts, Poole shot 70% in the restricted area, but in such a small sample size and with a significant share of those shots being created by others, I wondered how his efficiency at the rim would change with an increased offensive load.
This most recent season, Poole’s finishing scaled up well; on over 200 attempts, he shot 66.2% in the restricted area. While this marks a slight decline from his bonkers 70% in his sophomore season, it’s still impressive that Poole maintained a high level of efficiency while increasing his share of unassisted restricted area buckets from less than 33% to nearly 60%. As I mentioned previously, Poole actually finished at a higher clip — albeit with fewer unassisted buckets — than Steph Curry and his percentages are nearly identical to Bizarro Steph in the mid-range and non-restricted area paint. These percentages marked a 4.5% and 4% improvement in those respective areas.
Jordan Poole’s prowess as a finisher and mid-range scorer put him in the elite amongst guards — only Malik Monk, Chris Paul, and Seth Curry finished the regular season with a higher 2P FG% than Poole, who hit those shots at a 55% rate. That percentage was good for #30 overall in the entire NBA.
The most important improvement that Poole made this past season was as a three-point shooter. Poole’s catch-and-shoot percentage of 37.9% was only 0.1 points above the season prior, but he made significant improvement in his ability to shoot off the dribble. Poole raised his pull-up three percentage by nearly percentage points and shot 34.2% this most recent season — these shots accounted for about 40% of all of his three-point attempts.
I also filtered NBA.com’s shot tracking data for Poole’s final 19 games of the season and found that he shot 44.7% on catch-and-shoot threes and 39.6% on pull-up threes on nearly 200 attempts in that stretch. What’s most impressive is that Poole’s distribution of threes changed significantly in those final 19 games as he only took 12 more catch-and-shoot threes than he did pull-up attempts.
Here is Jordan Poole’s shot chart for this past regular season from Positive Residual:
The lineup stats!
We’ll start with the non-garbage time Jordan Poole lineups to play at least 50 possessions, courtesy of Cleaning the Glass. I’ve highlighted the positive lineups below in green.
There are two only positive lineups here that consist entirely of players that will be on next season’s Warriors’ roster. The early-season starting lineup tallied a positive net rating of +7.6 and the Curry/Poole/Thompson/Wiggins/Looney lineup racked up a +53.0 net rating. I’d be curious to see that second lineup get more run next season, especially after seeing Andrew Wiggins thrive at the 4 in the playoffs.
You’ll note that the only negative/neutral lineups listed here are ones where Steph Curry sat. There are only three non-Steph lineups listed above and all of them include at least one of Gary Payton II and Otto Porter Jr. I wanted to see how non-Steph lineups with Poole performed without either GPII or OPJ, so I filtered for their absence on Cleaning the Glass, which I’ve linked to here. Poole lineups without Steph/GPII/OPJ had a -5.6 net rating with a very bad 116.6 DRTG.
To give you a sense of just how different next year’s bench lineups are going to look, Poole only played 234 possessions without Steph Curry or any of the Warriors’ free-agency departures. You can see those lineups here.
15-most used three-man combos (positive ones bolded):
Poole/Wiggins/Looney: +8.6 net rating (114.8 ORTG) in 955 minutes.
Poole/Wiggins/Green: +6.8 net rating (109.9 ORTG) in 820 minutes.
Curry/Poole/Wiggins: +15.2 net rating (117.0 ORTG) in 774 minutes.
Curry/Poole/Looney: +15.5 net rating (117.5 ORTG) in 610 minutes.
Poole/Green/Looney: +2.8 net rating (109.4 ORTG) in 513 minutes.
Curry/Poole/Green: +13.3 net rating (112.7 ORTG) in 474 minutes.
Poole/Wiggins/OPJ: +17.0 net rating (114.3 ORTG) in 437 minutes.
Poole/GPII/Wiggins: +11.1 net rating (111.2 ORTG) in 378 minutes.
Poole/Thompson/Wiggins: +7.1 net rating (115.2 ORTG) in 288 minutes.
Poole/Wiggins/Kuminga: -0.5 net rating (109.7 ORTG) in 285 minutes.
Poole/Lee/Wiggins: -2.0 net rating (102.0 ORTG) in 240 minutes.
Poole/OPJ/Looney: +5.7 net rating (112.6 ORTG) in 233 minutes.
Poole/Thompson/Looney: +3.1 net rating (111.1 ORTG) in 230 minutes.
Poole/Lee/Kuminga: +11.5 net rating (116.3 ORTG) in 224 minutes.
Poole/OPJ/Green: +7.5 net rating (105.9 ORTG) in 204 minutes.
Jordan Poole played the second-most games of any Warrior this past season and started 51 games, so he’s a good barometer for which combos played the most minutes this season. I was surprised, however to only see Steph Curry and Draymond Green pop up three times in the top 15 and Klay Thompson twice. The two players who appear most frequently in this list are Kevon Looney and Andrew Wiggins. Looney’s combos are of particular interest to me. Take, for example, Curry/Poole/Looney, which tallied a higher ORTG than Curry/Poole/Green. That’s not an outcome I would have expected! Nor would I expect Poole/Wiggins/Looney to do better on offense than Poole/Wiggins/Green, but I think it’s possible that has something to do with Green’s poor play immediately after his return from injury.
One combo that I expected to see on this top-15 list was Curry/Poole/Thompson. But after doing some basic math, I realized they only appeared in 26 games together and for a fair amount of the games prior to Curry’s injury, Jordan Poole was playing more freely without Klay Thompson, who was not always a part of bench lineups. In those 26 games each player was available for, they actually only shared the court in 19 games. So that’s something of an explanation for how the most fearsome shooting trio on the Warriors was the 32nd-most used Jordan Poole three-man combo. I’d expect that changes next season — that trio had a +32.6 net rating and a 121.7 ORTG in 129 minutes together. Their offensive prowess shouldn’t be a surprise, but an 89 DRTG? That’s quite encouraging, even if it may be owed to Kerr deploying that trio mostly in kill-shot moments.
Notable 2-man combos (positive ones bolded):
Poole/Wiggins: +8.9 net rating (113.0 ORTG) in 1562 minutes.
Poole/Looney: +7.3 net rating (114.7 ORTG) in 1115 minutes.
Curry/Poole: +15.2 net rating (116.7 ORTG) in 964 minutes.
Poole/Green: +5.7 net rating (109.1 ORTG) in 951 minutes.
Poole/OPJ: +7.8 net rating (109.3 ORTG) in 709 minutes.
Poole/Kuminga: +4.4 net rating (112.3 ORG) in 629 minutes.
Poole/Lee: +4.2 net rating (108.9 ORTG) in 582 minutes.
Poole/GPII: +8.3 net rating (110.3 ORTG) in 576 minutes.
Poole/Bjelica: +2.4 net rating (107.7 ORTG) in 494 minutes.
Poole/Thompson: +5.0 net rating (112.1 ORTG) in 486 minutes.
Poole/JTA: +1.8 net rating (107.5 ORTG) in 439 minutes.
Poole/Moody: -4.5 net rating (103.8 ORTG) in 297 minutes.
Poole/Iguodala: +9.5 net rating (100.0 ORTG) in 225 minutes.
Poole/Chiozza: -9.0 net rating (100.0 ORTG) in 79 minutes.
The five-best Jordan Poole duos here are alongside Steph Curry, Andre Iguodala, Andrew Wiggins, Gary Payton II, and Otto Porter Jr. The sample size is small for Poole/Iguodala, but their sub-100 DRTG speaks volumes about how useful Andre’s defensive organizing can be. I’ve said enough about Gary Payton and Otto Porter Jr. already, but they will be dearly missed next season — their net ratings above are another frustrating data point in their favor..
I suspect that the net ratings of Poole/Green and Poole/Thompson are artificially deflated by Steph Curry’s late-season absence and the Warriors’ freefall right after Curry’s injury — take those with a grain of salt.
Given that Jonathan Kuminga and Moses Moody were both exposed to a fair amount of garbage time, I wanted to cross-reference those Poole-led duos with Cleaning the Glass’s non-garbage-time numbers. Poole/Kuminga actually performs better with a +5.7 net rating and a 118.2 ORTG. Throw Steph Curry into that mix and the net rating grows to +8.8 and the defense tightens up to the tune of a 105.2 DRTG. Without Curry, the Poole/Kuminga duo still managed a +4.5 net rating and oddly enough, their offense became more potent — Poole/Kuminga sans Steph had a 119.9 ORTG but their 115.4 DRTG is quite poor.
If we do that same exercise for Poole/Moody, here’s what we get: Poole/Moody in non-garbage time had a -6.8 net rating and 109.3 ORTG. With Curry on the floor, Poole/Moody had a -3.9 net rating due to terrible defense as they gave up 126.7 points/100 possessions while tallying a 122.7 ORTG. Without Curry, Poole/Moody had a -7.3 net rating and a sub-par 106.6 ORTG.
Jordan Poole’s playoff performance:
21.0 points, 2.4 rebounds, and 5.4 assists in 32.4 minutes per game on 55/44/85 shooting splits in 5 games against the Denver Nuggets.
17.8 points, 4.2 rebounds, and 4.3 assists in 29.8 minutes per game on 46/32/94 shooting splits in 6 games against the Memphis Grizzlies.
16.4 points, 2.8 rebounds, and 3.8 assists in 28.0 minutes per game on 64/40/100 shooting splits in 5 games against the Dallas Mavericks.
13.2 points, 1.8 rebounds, and 1.8 assists in 20.8 minutes per game on 43/38/91 shooting splits in 6 games against the Boston Celtics.
Among their peers of young guards (Darius Garland, Tyler Herro, Tyrese Maxey, and LaMelo Ball among others), Jordan Poole and Herro are the only players that have been exposed to and exposed at such a high level of play. This exposure was something of a double-edged sword for Jordan Poole. The deeper you go into the playoffs, the crueler the gameplans and the more aggressive the mismatch hunting. As rotations shrink, players who played key roles in the series might have their minutes cut. In extreme cases, starters, like, say, Nikola Mirotic of the 2019 Milwaukee Bucks, may get DNP’d.
With each passing series, Jordan Poole’s minutes shrank but I don’t think this shouldn’t be viewed as an indictment on him or his future potential. At the highest level of play, Poole struggled on defense — I’ll gladly concede that. But Poole showed marked improvements in the deciding games of the Finals, to the point that Andre Iguodala credited him with winning Game 5 with his defense. Here’s Andre talking about Poole on his Point Forward podcast:
JP is a guy that when he has 30 or he has 25, he puts his stamp on the game — “It’s the great Jordan Poole, it’s the Splash Kid!” — you know what I mean? That’s how he measures his performance. He hit a shot at the end of the quarter that was really big for us — end of the third, I believe — [and] he makes some really big shots that game, he makes some really big plays for us, [...] and he was really solid on defense. He wasn’t a shadow of himself on defense, he wasn’t standing straight up, he was an actual body, so guys had to go through him or go all the way around him. Most of the time guys just slither past him and lay it up and he showed some resistance and he had like four or five key plays. Draymond spoke about it — if you go in for 77 seconds, that can determine — your 77 seconds can determine who wins that game. Everything counts when you’re in the Finals.
When he came out the game — he didn’t finish the game — [...] game’s over pretty much, we just gotta seal out the last minute or two, whatever. I’m like, “Bro, you really just what won us the game.” This like six minutes [left] to go. He was like “man, I ain’t really get off like I normally get off.” You know how he’s thinking — “I don’t have 25 points, I didn’t really do nothing.” [...] His position coach, Chris DeMarco, was standing next to me and Chris DeMarco goes, “Bro, you don’t understand how important your minutes are. This is what Andre and I have been telling you all year. Your defense was good! This is what we’ve been talking about.” That’s what’s making you a champion — when you exhaust yourself through every facet.”
Over 22 playoff games, Jordan Poole averaged 17 points, 3.8 assists, 2.8 rebounds, 0.8 steals, 0.4 blocks, and 2.4 turnovers a game on 51/39/90 shooting splits. Poole’s three-point shot fluctuated from series to series — he made just 2 of his 16 pull-up attempts from deep against the Memphis Grizzlies only a series after going 11/20 on pull-up threes against the Denver Nuggets, for example — but he upped his efficiency on two-point shots during the playoffs and very nearly reached the hallowed 50/40/90 mark. Poole raised his restricted area, paint non-RA, and mid-range percentages by 9.1, 4.5, and 11.9 respectively. 24 different players took at least 100 two-point field goal attempts in the playoffs, but only two of them, Chris Paul and DeAndre Ayton, shot a higher percentage than Poole’s 62.7%. Here’s Jordan Poole’s playoff shot chart, courtesy of Positive Residual:
Here are Jordan Poole’s 15-most used lineups courtesy of Cleaning the Glass (positive lineups are highlighted in green):
Poole’s most frequently used lineup, the Nickname Lineup/Death Lineup 3.0, crushed the Denver Nuggets in its first two games together, but its numbers were inconsistent throughout the playoffs, as I’ve talked about in other posts. In the Finals, for example, that lineup had a negative net rating of -4.0. Other lineups, like, say, Curry/Poole/Wiggins/Kuminga/Green, only played five games together in the playoffs, 9 of which came against the Memphis Grizzlies and 6 against the Denver Nuggets. The success of Poole/Thompson/Wiggins/OPJ/Green could be a good blueprint for non-Steph lineups in high-leverage moments — surround Poole with a good mix of shooting and defense and at least one playmaker and good things can happen.
Another lineup of note: Poole/Thompson/Wiggins/Green/Looney. That lineup played in just 7 games together and most of its minutes came during the Warriors’ first-round series against the Denver Nuggets. That’s the type of lineup that might play more minutes next season if Curry load manages periodically in the regular season to preserve himself for a long playoff run. It sounds silly in retrospect, but Jordan Poole and that lineup played so well during the Nuggets’ series that a few talking heads/click mongerers asked the deeply unserious question if the Warriors would be better off bringing Steph Curry off of the bench to accommodate Poole.
Against a soft Nuggets defense, Jordan Poole kicked off his first-ever playoff run in historic fashion. Through the first three games of the playoffs, Poole scored 30, 29. and 27 points on 67/59/81 shooting splits. This put Poole in Hall of Fame company:
What Poole did exceptionally well in that Nuggets’ series was bomb threes off of the dribble. Here are a few highlights:
And for good measure, here’s Poole being a goon:
Poole and the Warriors were so dominant in the first two games of that series that garbage time ensued in the two games at Chase Center. In the first road game of the playoffs, the Nuggets gave the Warriors a hard fight and played down to the final possession. The Nickname Lineup closed that game and in its four minutes together, had a +47.2 net rating with a 75 DRTG. Poole not only held up defensively in crunch time, he hit arguably the biggest bucket of the night:
In the final two games of that series, Poole finally came back down to earth with consecutive 3/10 shooting nights. Poole’s minutes shrank to just 25 in the deciding game of the series as Gary Payton II was an unexpected hero during crunch time. The Nickname Lineup started to show its flaws in the final two games of the series as a 144.8 DRTG offset its 138.7 ORTG. In spite of their defensive shortcomings, that lineup started Game 5 of the series, but their -37.5 net rating in the closeout game raised concerns about whether that lineup could play big minutes in the next series against the Memphis Grizzlies.
Jordan Poole returned to a bench role in the Western Conference Semifinals, but he found himself closing Game 1 of the series in a three-guard lineup of Curry/GPII/Poole alongside Klay Thompson and Andrew Wiggins after Draymond Green’s suspension. Considering the stakes, Poole’s Game 1 against the Grizzlies was probably his best game of the playoffs. In 37 huge minutes, Poole scored 31 points on 12/20 shooting and came just two rebounds and one assist short of a triple-double. When the Warriors opened up the fourth quarter without Steph Curry on the court, Poole proceeded to assist or score on all 12 of the Warriors’ points before Curry came back in. Here are highlights from Poole’s huge night:
Poole proceeded to score 20 and 27 points in the next two games of the series, bringing his scoring average to 22.9 points on 56/46 shooting splits in his first 8 games of the playoffs. Bonkers stuff. The Warriors lost the second game of that series and Poole shot just 1/6 from deep, but in Game 3, his 27 points got overlooked after Grizzlies’ head coach, Taylor Jenkins, blamed Poole for an injury to Ja Morant’s knee. I won’t waste much more time on Jenkins’ elementary gamesmanship — let us recall that the “yank” that Jenkins highlighted turned out to have nothing to do with the knee contusion that kept Morant out for the rest of the series — instead, let’s marvel at Poole’s 27-point night in a blowout victory:
In the final three games of the series, Jordan Poole scored just 14, 3, and 12 points. Ja Morant’s absence seemed to tighten up the Grizzlies’ defense and Poole’s shot suffered as a result. Over those three games, Poole shot just 3/17 from deep and had a particularly inefficient 4/12 shooting night with 2/1 shooting from deep in the series-clinching Game 6.
Jordan Poole’s most consistent playoffs series was the Western Conference Finals against the Dallas Mavericks. In five relatively stress-free games, Poole put up 16.4 points in just under 30 minutes a game on absolutely silly 64/40/100 shooting splits. What’s most insane is that Poole shot 83.3% on two-point shots in that series and his most inefficient night from two-point land was a 3/5 night in Game 2 of that series. Here’s Poole in Game 1 creating unassisted two-pointers:
In Game 2 of the WCF, the Warriors fell behind by as many as 19 points in the first half and trailed by 15 points when Jordan Poole entered the game in the third quarter. By the end of the period, the Mavericks’ lead was down to just two points, at which point Jordan Poole got to run the show without Steph Curry. In a little less than six minutes, Poole scored or assisted on 10 points and the Warriors led 102-95 when Steph Curry checked back into the game. Here are some highlights from that fourth-quarter run:
The Warriors won Game 3 on the road on a night where Jordan Poole took four shots, all of which came from deep. In Game 4 of the series, the Warriors were well on their way to getting blown out on the road but nearly pulled off an improbable fourth-quarter comeback behind a Poole-led garbage-time unit of Poole/Lee/Moody/Kuminga/Bjelica. Poole followed that game up with a hyper-efficient 16/6/6 night on 6/8 shooting as the Warriors closed out the Mavericks en route to their sixth Finals appearance in eight seasons. You can see highlights of that game (as well as some Kevon Looney clips) below:
In the crucible that is the NBA Finals, Jordan Poole’s flaws were put on display in the most important games of his entire career. As the series progressed, Steve Kerr was quicker to pull Poole out of games, and in the final two games, he played less than 20 minutes a night. In spite of that, Poole’s averages per 36 minutes and his shooting splits were on par with what he did in the regular season. This is to say, Jordan Poole’s comedown against one of the better defensive teams of recent playoffs turned him into merely... regular-season Jordan Poole.
In the first three games of the Finals, Poole looked rushed trying to create against the Celtics’ tough perimeter defense and averaged nearly five turnovers per 36 minutes. Poole followed up a 2/7 shooting night in Game 1 with a brutal stint of first-half minutes in Game 2. Here are some defensive lowlights:
Poole got yanked around the 8-minute mark of the second period and didn’t come back into the game until the Warriors had a healthy lead with less than two minutes left in the third quarter, which set the stage for Jordan Poole’s audacious redemption:
Poole and the Warriors’ second-unit then went on a fourth-quarter run that put the game out of reach and saved Steve Kerr from having to sub Steph Curry in again. Jordan Poole followed that game with a rough Game 3 where he struggled on defense, which lead to head-scratching moments like this one:
During Poole’s non-Steph minutes in the fourth quarter, the Celtics delighted in dragging him into actions:
Because Draymond Green fouled out of the game with a little over four minutes left, Poole was still out on the court in the final stretch where the Warriors could have made it a game. The Celtics, again, found Poole and pretty much ended the game at his expense:
Poole found his footing in the all-important Game 4 and scored 8 huge points in the Warriors’ second-quarter minutes without Steph Curry. Here are two of the deep threes that Poole hit during that stretch:
Another funny thing happened in Game 4 — Nemanja Bjelica played more minutes and the Celtics’ players, for some reason, decided that they’d rather attack Bjelica than Poole, which worked out in the Warriors’ favor:
Poole was also on the court in the tense fourth-quarter minutes where Draymond Green sat and the Warriors went from down four points to up three.
In the last two games of the Finals, Poole played under 20 minutes in each game, but he managed to put up 14 and 15 points. Poole’s most memorable moment of Game 5 came at the end of the third quarter when he put his second buzzer-beating three of the Finals:
Take note of the score when Poole fires his shot. The Warriors had started the second half up by 12 points, but the Celtics had taken the lead back third quarter by hitting five threes in a row to open the period. This run recalled the horrors of the Celtics’ fourth-quarter run of three-point shots in Game 1 of the series — for the Warriors to end that quarter with a lead and on such an exhilarating moment was a huge relief.
Poole scored 11 in the second half, but it was his improved defense in the deciding minutes that later earned the praise of Andre Iguodala for winning the Warriors the game:
In the series-clinching Game 6, Poole played a huge role in the dominant first half that gave the Warriors a commanding 15-point cushion at halftime. During the Warriors’ 21-0 run that took them from down 6 points to up 15, Poole hit three shots from that deep that gutted the Boston crowd. You can watch that run here:
Poole played just 8 minutes in the second half, but the Warriors managed to keep their double-digit lead during their non-Steph minutes and when the game was won, Poole celebrated the Warriors’ victory as well as his Andrew Wiggins’ future earnings:
What is next for Jordan Poole?
Speaking of future earnings — sneaky transition eh? — Jordan Poole’s rookie-scale contract will end in the summer of 2023. Poole became extension-eligible in early July, but to date, no progress has been made, nor have I read any reports of ongoing discussions between the Warriors’ management and Poole’s representatives. This is not to say that the Warriors don’t want to keep Jordan Poole, but rather that Poole has good reason to want to hit restricted free agency next summer. Barring injury, it’s hard to imagine Poole making less on the open market than Jalen Brunson (4 years/$104 million) or Afernee Simons (4 years/$100 million), considering his linear-improvement and reportedly maniacal work ethic.
During his appearance on Andre Iguodala’s Point Forward podcast, Poole talked at length about his love for the process of self-improvement:
The point that Poole makes is a profound one and it would make sense that he believes that he is still far from his ceiling — he’s made huge improvements to his game with each season and went from being unplayable for much of his rookie season to being the third-leading scorer for Warriors in a championship run. Poole’s up-and-down series against the Celtics amplified his flaws in a glaring fashion, but his improvement throughout the series should serve as a reminder of his desire and ability to grow as a player.
Jordan Poole has made tangible improvements on defense and while I don’t expect him to ever be a lockdown defense, there’s no reason he can’t be a competent one if he puts in the work. But the question that Poole has to answer is what type of player he wants to be. Poole has proven through his work off the court, that he can make huge improvements to his game year-to-year. Does he want to improve his defense so that Steve Kerr will feel compelled to make him a staple of the Warriors’ closing lineups next season? Can he get good enough on defense not only to close games for the Warriors but eventually usurp one of Klay Thompson or Andrew Wiggins or Draymond Green in the starting lineup?
If Jordan cannot make those improvements or there is no path to him starting for the Warriors at any point in the next few seasons, will Poole even want to remain a part of the franchise? The Warriors are about to face a hellish luxury tax bill that likely guarantees that at least one of Poole, Green, or Wiggins won’t be on the roster next season barring a trade of James Wiseman into cap space or other tax-reducing maneuvers. The Warriors are renowned for their offensive firepower, but their defense has always been the underlooked aspect of their championship mettle. If Poole cannot play good enough defense to stay on the court for 30+ minutes in the Finals, will the Warriors want to pay Poole a contract in excess of $25 million?
Jordan Poole is the rare 22-year-old who is both an NBA championship winner and on the likely path to stardom. It wouldn’t be unreasonable for Poole to feel like one or two championships as a supplementary player would satisfy him enough to seek a new challenge of leading a team of his own. The Orlando Magic, San Antonio Spurs, and Indiana Pacers come to mind as teams who could use Poole’s combination of scoring and playmaking that could also have the cap space needed to pay him a contract that the Warriors would be reluctant to pay.
While Poole does have his flaws, ones that became brutally apparent at times in the Finals, he should be an essential part of next season’s Warriors. As Steph Curry ages and the Warriors seek to reduce his physical load, Poole will receive more minutes and opportunities to run the offense. Jordan Poole can not only approximate Steph Curry in minutes with or without him, but he has also proven that he can win the Warriors their non-Steph minutes, a luxury the Warriors have rarely had. In the playoffs, Poole actually had a higher net rating in non-Steph minutes (+2.1) than he did in the regular season (+0.3).
The future contracts of Jordan Poole and Andrew Wiggins put the Warriors and Joe Lacob — who is explicitly reluctant to carry a $400 million + payroll — in a bind. But as the Warriors consider their roster in the future, I hope that they value Poole as a bridge to a future after Steph Curry. The Warriors will not easily be able to replace Jordan Poole and if they choose to let him walk, I hope they have a sound backup plan. Playoff flaws be damned — young guards who can score 15+ points a game in the playoffs on near 50/40/90 shooting splits don’t grow on trees. It’s not out of the question that a peak version of Jordan Poole approximates the prime version of Damian Lillard, especially if Poole’s late-season jump is proof that his volume shooting touch is here to stay. I simply hope that Poole reaches that peak in a Warriors uniform.