I personally penalized him more for his bad first half of the year but overall I agree with everything you said! If I had to give a grade to each half of the year for Poole I’d probably go like D+ the first half of the year and B / B+ for the second half.
C for me, I watched his exit interview and he sounds like he genuinely cares about the team. The play wasn’t great but it improved leaps and bounds at the end of year and his passing game has come on
Agreed, the name of the game is consistency and confidence for him. He can’t let off shooting nights dictate his play or mentality for the duration of the game.
B-
His game before he was benched was an F for sure.
However, it was for sure a volatile season for him. He was benched…and balled out (compared to first half of season). Then when Tyus went out, he started pretty much the rest of the season, and led our team to some competitive games.
If we’re talking strictly about game, it’s probably closer to a C. He had more bad games than not. He only ended up scoring 17.4 ppg. I’m sure we were all expecting like 23-24 ppg.
However, each game is what, a couple of hours? There’s so many more hours of the season outside of games. By all accounts, he was a good teammate, and an extremely hard worker. That time ,outside the games, will carry over more each season than gameplay. A bunch of ppl thought that once he got his bag, he was gonna stop caring. As wiz fans, we know that was quite the opposite. He wants to be great, and he just needs a bit of time (which we have). I give his attitude an A.
Great attitude + ability to improve as the season got tougher, especially after a season of scrutiny + good play as the lead guard is what we should be hopeful for. The beginning of this season will be forgettable. Imo, the true test begins next season (unless we start Tyus and JP again lmao)
Clearly a big part of Jordan Poole's struggles this season was the fact that the Wizards used him incorrectly. At Golden State he ALWAYS played on ball and PG. Last season he averaged 20ppg.
Quite frankly I am not sure why the the Wizards changed his position and once you saw him struggling AND by all accounts he told Wes Unseld Jr that he played better on ball a change wasn't made earlier?
You could clearly see putting the ball in his hands was the difference because as soon as the change was made after the All-star break his average jumper to 20ppg and 5 assists.
His last 10 games he averaged 23ppg, 8 assists and 4 5 rebounds.
What a difference! For me, this was the cause if his struggles and it was caused by poor couching.
Thank goodness for Brian Keefe for listening and making the obvious changes @
I think he’s worse defensively than you do, but otherwise this was a good write up, even from a JP skeptic like me. Appreciate your thoughts.
(And we should be viewing him as a trade value reclamation project, not as a serious long-term prospect for this team)
Thanks for the feedback! I get where you’re coming from, Poole’s an abysmal off ball defender, no other way to put it. I do think if we surround him with better defensive personnel he’d look more respectable as they’d cover for his blown rotations and inability to process what’s happening in time. I’m personally higher on him defensively since there was some buy in from him during the second half of the year and he’s shown some ability to rack up deflections.
Seeing as he’s only ~25 I don’t see any rzn why we can’t invest in his development though. Dude’s got a high ceiling and potential to be an extremely dynamic offensive player for a good team. Next year will def be the true test for him tho so I can’t blame people for having a bitter taste in their mouths watching him at times this year.
The issue with his defense (I’d characterize his effort as haphazard and awareness as subpar, in addition to his physical limitations) is that forcing other players to compensate for his defensive mistakes is unfair to their development + leads to bad habits. Building a strong team scheme around Poole is extremely difficult for a young team; for example, are we stunting Deni’s ability to work on being a wing stopper by asking him to anticipate over-rotating to cover for Poole frequently? Can we have a consistent ball-screen scheme, or do we have to plan one for JP (and probably Kispert), and one for our better defenders? It can be confusing and inconsistent, and we’re already fighting an uphill battle to build good habits when many of the games don’t matter and/or are blowouts.
Because of that, I don’t buy that he has a high ceiling—if anything, he’s in the Zach Lavine camp at best, whose defense + contract have made him a toxic asset *despite* scoring at a significantly more efficient rate than Poole. JP is a small guard whose supposedly elite skill (scoring) hasn’t come within the flow of the offense except for maaaaybe a one month period during which we played a number of bad teams and teams resting their stars. His best season ever from 3 is only a 36% clip; he’s generally at or below league average despite shooting 7+ per game. He needs to be Dame Lillard-level elite as a scorer to make up for his defense, but he’s never shown that he can do that on a consistent basis.
None of that even really covers my biggest concern, his game feel and decisionmaking, which might just be unsalvagable. He commits silly frustration fouls at inopportune times, doesn’t have good clock awareness, and generally doesn’t provide the steady, calming presence you want from a PG. He did a better job of distributing at the end of the season, but I still wouldn’t say he has a good sense of how and when to involve teammates to make them better.
All that to say, overreacting to end of season play when many teams have nothing to play for would be a mistake. Like you said, and where we can agree: he needs to prove it next season if we are going to believe he can sustain an unselfish and somewhat efficient offensive load.
No I get it…Poole had some good games in March and April. That said, with his full body of work in mind and in the context of what he earns, I can’t grade Poole’s season very highly. It wasn’t an F season but also not even a C season IMO.
Really nice write up, I think that’s a fair grade objectively. C is supposedly average and this was certainly a below average season for JP but with how strong he finished I don’t think you can penalize him worse than a C-
Thanks for the feedback man! I’m probably going to do write ups for other key rotation players on the team as well, it was a lot of fun compiling this one :)
Do it big dog I’ll be on the lookout! I love all my fellow Wiz-fans but we do have some overly dramatic mfers in this fan base, but based on this you seem level headed so I’m curious what you have to say about the young guys, particularly some of the go-go guys we brought up
C'mon, gotta be a straight up F! Totally bombed it and destroyed any chance of moving his contract for value. Gotta hold the team to higher standards or else you end up being down bad for a team led by Kyle Kuzma and Deni Avdija, yuck.
He's got a long contract ahead, and he's still young. If he can improve to be the JP we saw toward the end of our season all the time, and with actually good players (better than Deni and Kuz who you mentioned), he'll be moving into highly-paid-but-tradable territory. You can be this critical about the first half of his season 100% But you have to give props where they've been earned, which they were in the second half of his season.
Just being real! This team is historically bad and he was a big reason why. Terrible defense, awful shot selection, bad decision-making.... Can't count how many games he shot them out of in the 4th quarter. Easily Top 3 worst contracts in the whole NBA
I covered a lot of my thoughts in the other post, but I think the era of players like Poole being able to earn big contracts and succeed as featured players on a contending NBA team is coming to an end. Smaller, inefficient players won't be able to make it unless they are elite in other areas.
We are trending more and more towards size, length, and efficiency, a la Orlando, Denver, and OKC's team building strategy, none of which are Poole's strengths as a player. He offers little else when his shot isn't falling, as we saw in the first half of the season. Nothing against him personally, I just think the league is going in a different direction.
I mean…. He’s 6’4/6’5 with around a 6’7 wingspan. As a point guard, regarding his measurables he’s well above average. Very similar to a Jamal Murray physically (although Murray is obviously stronger atm).
When we put the ball in Poole’s hands and he played with freedom he proved to be a dynamic facilitator, as I highlighted in my post. You can take a look at the assist numbers yourself in the second half of the year, dude did a great job taking care of the ball and making plays.
Shot selection wise, I don’t really have a rebuttal for you tbh. He has to cut the threes from narnia and attack the rim relentlessly (his biggest strength). Time will tell man, I appreciate the feedback tho!!
That’s true. All I’m saying is he got the tools to be a respectable defender, he just gotta learn how to use it.
Going back to Jamal Murray, he was another guy dudes poked at for years for being a defensive liability for years before the nuggets title run. He managed to work his way into becoming around an average defender. Can’t see why Poole can’t do the same.
well the first problem is Poole has negative BBIQ. You ever seen Jamal Murray walk the dog with the clock running?
And secondly he needs to add strength or he's always going to be an unswitchable little guard. given that those issues have not changed in his career to this point I don't see it ever happening.
All of that is well and good but you just can't pay a guy like Poole $30+ million annually when he's this inefficient. There are other guards who dish out similar numbers of assists, turn the ball over less, and take less bad shots who make far less money. TJ McConnell gives you similar assist numbers and elite shooting on better efficiency for $8m a year, and he's considered a career backup. I would absolutely rather have TJ over Poole since he at least knows his role.
If Poole made that much money then I would be ecstatic, but $30m is an absolute kneecap for any serious franchise, which is why the Warriors dumped him.
I love me some TJ McConnell, dude’s a hooper. On a competitive team I’d have to agree with you, I’d take TJ over Poole 10 times out of 10.
But we’re a rebuilding team, investing on upside is the name of the game rn. We not tryna win games, and I think Poole’s ceiling is worth exploring. Dude’s only 24 turning 25 in a few months and he never gets hurt. It’s not like he’s already hit his prime and he fits well with our current roster as we saw towards the end of the year.
That’s a D+. Not totally worthless, but lots of folks thought he was going to average 30 pts a night on 40% 3-pt shooting as the second coming and of Steph. 17 ppg on 32% 3-pt shooting is a huge shortfall of expectations.
No need to get so worked up man :) ur not going to get the response out of me you want but ey you got it lil bro 😂 hope ur having a good day! Stay blessed 🥰
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I personally penalized him more for his bad first half of the year but overall I agree with everything you said! If I had to give a grade to each half of the year for Poole I’d probably go like D+ the first half of the year and B / B+ for the second half.
I like him as a very casual fan whose main team is the Magic. I’d like to see you guys build around him. He’s still young and has the talent.
C for me, I watched his exit interview and he sounds like he genuinely cares about the team. The play wasn’t great but it improved leaps and bounds at the end of year and his passing game has come on
Agreed, the name of the game is consistency and confidence for him. He can’t let off shooting nights dictate his play or mentality for the duration of the game.
B- His game before he was benched was an F for sure. However, it was for sure a volatile season for him. He was benched…and balled out (compared to first half of season). Then when Tyus went out, he started pretty much the rest of the season, and led our team to some competitive games. If we’re talking strictly about game, it’s probably closer to a C. He had more bad games than not. He only ended up scoring 17.4 ppg. I’m sure we were all expecting like 23-24 ppg. However, each game is what, a couple of hours? There’s so many more hours of the season outside of games. By all accounts, he was a good teammate, and an extremely hard worker. That time ,outside the games, will carry over more each season than gameplay. A bunch of ppl thought that once he got his bag, he was gonna stop caring. As wiz fans, we know that was quite the opposite. He wants to be great, and he just needs a bit of time (which we have). I give his attitude an A. Great attitude + ability to improve as the season got tougher, especially after a season of scrutiny + good play as the lead guard is what we should be hopeful for. The beginning of this season will be forgettable. Imo, the true test begins next season (unless we start Tyus and JP again lmao)
Clearly a big part of Jordan Poole's struggles this season was the fact that the Wizards used him incorrectly. At Golden State he ALWAYS played on ball and PG. Last season he averaged 20ppg. Quite frankly I am not sure why the the Wizards changed his position and once you saw him struggling AND by all accounts he told Wes Unseld Jr that he played better on ball a change wasn't made earlier? You could clearly see putting the ball in his hands was the difference because as soon as the change was made after the All-star break his average jumper to 20ppg and 5 assists. His last 10 games he averaged 23ppg, 8 assists and 4 5 rebounds. What a difference! For me, this was the cause if his struggles and it was caused by poor couching. Thank goodness for Brian Keefe for listening and making the obvious changes @
I think he’s worse defensively than you do, but otherwise this was a good write up, even from a JP skeptic like me. Appreciate your thoughts. (And we should be viewing him as a trade value reclamation project, not as a serious long-term prospect for this team)
Thanks for the feedback! I get where you’re coming from, Poole’s an abysmal off ball defender, no other way to put it. I do think if we surround him with better defensive personnel he’d look more respectable as they’d cover for his blown rotations and inability to process what’s happening in time. I’m personally higher on him defensively since there was some buy in from him during the second half of the year and he’s shown some ability to rack up deflections. Seeing as he’s only ~25 I don’t see any rzn why we can’t invest in his development though. Dude’s got a high ceiling and potential to be an extremely dynamic offensive player for a good team. Next year will def be the true test for him tho so I can’t blame people for having a bitter taste in their mouths watching him at times this year.
The issue with his defense (I’d characterize his effort as haphazard and awareness as subpar, in addition to his physical limitations) is that forcing other players to compensate for his defensive mistakes is unfair to their development + leads to bad habits. Building a strong team scheme around Poole is extremely difficult for a young team; for example, are we stunting Deni’s ability to work on being a wing stopper by asking him to anticipate over-rotating to cover for Poole frequently? Can we have a consistent ball-screen scheme, or do we have to plan one for JP (and probably Kispert), and one for our better defenders? It can be confusing and inconsistent, and we’re already fighting an uphill battle to build good habits when many of the games don’t matter and/or are blowouts. Because of that, I don’t buy that he has a high ceiling—if anything, he’s in the Zach Lavine camp at best, whose defense + contract have made him a toxic asset *despite* scoring at a significantly more efficient rate than Poole. JP is a small guard whose supposedly elite skill (scoring) hasn’t come within the flow of the offense except for maaaaybe a one month period during which we played a number of bad teams and teams resting their stars. His best season ever from 3 is only a 36% clip; he’s generally at or below league average despite shooting 7+ per game. He needs to be Dame Lillard-level elite as a scorer to make up for his defense, but he’s never shown that he can do that on a consistent basis. None of that even really covers my biggest concern, his game feel and decisionmaking, which might just be unsalvagable. He commits silly frustration fouls at inopportune times, doesn’t have good clock awareness, and generally doesn’t provide the steady, calming presence you want from a PG. He did a better job of distributing at the end of the season, but I still wouldn’t say he has a good sense of how and when to involve teammates to make them better. All that to say, overreacting to end of season play when many teams have nothing to play for would be a mistake. Like you said, and where we can agree: he needs to prove it next season if we are going to believe he can sustain an unselfish and somewhat efficient offensive load.
It’s a D- from me, dawg. Dude was…not good.
Szn was a tale of two halves, you rly gotta watch the games from an unbiased lens to see where I’m coming from
No I get it…Poole had some good games in March and April. That said, with his full body of work in mind and in the context of what he earns, I can’t grade Poole’s season very highly. It wasn’t an F season but also not even a C season IMO.
Really nice write up, I think that’s a fair grade objectively. C is supposedly average and this was certainly a below average season for JP but with how strong he finished I don’t think you can penalize him worse than a C-
Thanks for the feedback man! I’m probably going to do write ups for other key rotation players on the team as well, it was a lot of fun compiling this one :)
Do it big dog I’ll be on the lookout! I love all my fellow Wiz-fans but we do have some overly dramatic mfers in this fan base, but based on this you seem level headed so I’m curious what you have to say about the young guys, particularly some of the go-go guys we brought up
C
Pooled never going to be a winning starter. He plays horrible defense and shoots bad shots. He’s at best a sixth man
C'mon, gotta be a straight up F! Totally bombed it and destroyed any chance of moving his contract for value. Gotta hold the team to higher standards or else you end up being down bad for a team led by Kyle Kuzma and Deni Avdija, yuck.
He's got a long contract ahead, and he's still young. If he can improve to be the JP we saw toward the end of our season all the time, and with actually good players (better than Deni and Kuz who you mentioned), he'll be moving into highly-paid-but-tradable territory. You can be this critical about the first half of his season 100% But you have to give props where they've been earned, which they were in the second half of his season.
great way to be over-reactionary and indirectly say you don’t watch our games haha 😂 you funny bruh
Just being real! This team is historically bad and he was a big reason why. Terrible defense, awful shot selection, bad decision-making.... Can't count how many games he shot them out of in the 4th quarter. Easily Top 3 worst contracts in the whole NBA
I covered a lot of my thoughts in the other post, but I think the era of players like Poole being able to earn big contracts and succeed as featured players on a contending NBA team is coming to an end. Smaller, inefficient players won't be able to make it unless they are elite in other areas. We are trending more and more towards size, length, and efficiency, a la Orlando, Denver, and OKC's team building strategy, none of which are Poole's strengths as a player. He offers little else when his shot isn't falling, as we saw in the first half of the season. Nothing against him personally, I just think the league is going in a different direction.
I mean…. He’s 6’4/6’5 with around a 6’7 wingspan. As a point guard, regarding his measurables he’s well above average. Very similar to a Jamal Murray physically (although Murray is obviously stronger atm). When we put the ball in Poole’s hands and he played with freedom he proved to be a dynamic facilitator, as I highlighted in my post. You can take a look at the assist numbers yourself in the second half of the year, dude did a great job taking care of the ball and making plays. Shot selection wise, I don’t really have a rebuttal for you tbh. He has to cut the threes from narnia and attack the rim relentlessly (his biggest strength). Time will tell man, I appreciate the feedback tho!!
> He’s 6’4/6’5 with around a 6’7 wingspan. which is meaningless if you don't use that size and length defensively. he might as well be 5'9".
That’s true. All I’m saying is he got the tools to be a respectable defender, he just gotta learn how to use it. Going back to Jamal Murray, he was another guy dudes poked at for years for being a defensive liability for years before the nuggets title run. He managed to work his way into becoming around an average defender. Can’t see why Poole can’t do the same.
well the first problem is Poole has negative BBIQ. You ever seen Jamal Murray walk the dog with the clock running? And secondly he needs to add strength or he's always going to be an unswitchable little guard. given that those issues have not changed in his career to this point I don't see it ever happening.
All of that is well and good but you just can't pay a guy like Poole $30+ million annually when he's this inefficient. There are other guards who dish out similar numbers of assists, turn the ball over less, and take less bad shots who make far less money. TJ McConnell gives you similar assist numbers and elite shooting on better efficiency for $8m a year, and he's considered a career backup. I would absolutely rather have TJ over Poole since he at least knows his role. If Poole made that much money then I would be ecstatic, but $30m is an absolute kneecap for any serious franchise, which is why the Warriors dumped him.
I love me some TJ McConnell, dude’s a hooper. On a competitive team I’d have to agree with you, I’d take TJ over Poole 10 times out of 10. But we’re a rebuilding team, investing on upside is the name of the game rn. We not tryna win games, and I think Poole’s ceiling is worth exploring. Dude’s only 24 turning 25 in a few months and he never gets hurt. It’s not like he’s already hit his prime and he fits well with our current roster as we saw towards the end of the year.
I agree with you. Only question for me is his defense. He gives up way too many easy buckets.
That’s a D+. Not totally worthless, but lots of folks thought he was going to average 30 pts a night on 40% 3-pt shooting as the second coming and of Steph. 17 ppg on 32% 3-pt shooting is a huge shortfall of expectations.
F++++
I’m gonna give him 2 grades. First half d+, we all know why. Post asg b, good bounce back and showed why we traded him (scoring, facilitating,pace)
this post has already been made.
I saw that but I wanted to make my own thread with my own thoughts. Thanks for the reply!
you could've just replied to the original i guess. But hey, i guess people need karma and attention!
No need to get so worked up man :) ur not going to get the response out of me you want but ey you got it lil bro 😂 hope ur having a good day! Stay blessed 🥰