SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Sixteen months ago, this wouldn’t have been a predictable outcome for Jordan Poole. He’d just helped boost the dynasty Golden State Warriors to a legacy-clinching fourth title and, as a reward, was being prioritized ahead of his other extension-eligible, big-name teammates for a new contract. It was a franchise eager to commit to its young guard as a face of the future.
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But circumstances change, and Poole’s certainly did.
Poole spent this past Monday night in Sacramento. The Warriors signed him to that four-year extension but didn’t employ him for a single day of it. He’s on the Washington Wizards now. They’d just lost for the 22nd time in 26 games. But Poole hit eight 3s and scored 28 points, the latest step in an attempt to nudge his and Washington’s season in a more positive direction. He was in a good mood postgame in the visiting locker room.
But this week isn’t all about the future. It’s also a look back into Poole’s fresh NBA past. This Wizards road trip includes a stop in San Francisco to face the Warriors, regenerating memories of the positive times but also questions about the awkward way it deteriorated into an abrupt departure.
“When do we play there? Friday?” Poole said, smiling, knowing what’s coming. “We have Portland on Thursday? Got any Portland questions?”
Poole has remained reticent to speak about the Draymond Green punch and its aftermath since the moment it happened. Green has discussed it publicly plenty. Poole deflects and downplays at every opportunity, a private approach that was always respected and appreciated internally.
The day it happened, in the immediate aftermath of the tornado, he finished practice, wrapping his session with a normal high-intensity shooting routine. Steve Kerr and others admitted after the playoff elimination that the event — which included a TMZ leaking of the video, sowing distrust within the organization — led to the season’s downfall.
But Poole never missed a day of work or demanded any particular punishment.
“He handled it professionally,” Kevon Looney said.
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Poole, in the Kings’ visiting locker room, answered a handful of questions about the brighter times in San Francisco. His third year breakout served as a trampoline for his career, earning him both a championship and life-changing financial security. He was such a catalyst during the 2022 title run that Kerr referred to him as part of the “foundational six” afterward.
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“Successful time,” Poole said. “Learned a lot. Can’t ask for too much more than that. Won a championship. Played with Loon. Played with some of the greatest ever. Played with (Andrew Wiggins). Met great guys. The staff is good. It was a cool experience. It was just dope to accomplish something you’ve been looking for your entire life, winning a championship at the highest level, seeing what that takes.”
But the conversation inevitably shifts to the fourth season, an avenue he would rather avoid. After the interview, he jokes that he should’ve gone full Marshawn Lynch. He basically did.
How do you look back on the final season there and how everything went sideways?
“Next question,” Poole said.
Is there any level of regret about how any of it unfolded?
“Nah,” he said.
Were you upset with the Warriors at all about the way they handled the situation?
“I can honestly say that I haven’t thought about it,” Poole said. “I haven’t put too much thought into it.”
What came from it?
“I learned that I’m built for tougher,” Poole said. “I think that was pretty dope. I mean, being at the highest level, you get just, like, so much media, so much of everything just being with that organization. It made me realize I was built for a lot tougher.”
Do you still watch them?
“If the game is on,” Poole said.
A night later, the Warriors are home against the Celtics. They chase down Boston after trailing by 17 points, grabbing an overtime win that breathes a little life into a turbulent season. They’re 13-14 but on a temporary high, riding a three-game win streak with two off-days ahead.
But it’s the Wizards next on the schedule, which means Poole’s return. That subject is delivered to four of the team’s leaders — Kerr, Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Looney — and all four make two things clear: His time with the Warriors should be viewed as an unequivocal success, celebrated locally, but there is a level of discomfort about what transpired to change the narrative about his time with the franchise.
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“I look back at that, and I hate that it happened,” Kerr said. “I know that in my heart, that when (the punch) happened, we handled it the best way we thought we could handle it. But in hindsight — and hindsight is always 20/20 — we could have done better for sure. I just hate the way it ended for Jordan here, because he is a huge success story. For us and for him, this was a great marriage. He helped us win a title. We helped him, you know, become a champion and a guy who signed a big contract, life-changing contract. It was all wildly successful. But I hate the way it ended.”
Poole was drafted 28th overall in the 2019 draft. He joined the season after Kevin Durant left. Thompson missed Poole’s entire rookie year, and Curry only appeared in five games. The Warriors finished an NBA-worst 15-50. They were injured and bad enough to deliver developmental minutes. Poole played in 57 games and was one of the league’s least efficient players, learning through struggle.
The COVID-19 pandemic hit. The league shut down for several months, and when it started back up, the Warriors weren’t even invited to the NBA bubble in Orlando, Fla. They instead held a quarantined week of team practices in San Francisco that summer, and that is when Poole’s obsessive work started to show. He killed during that minicamp.
“He worked his ass off, earned everything, had to learn the hard way,” Kerr said. “Threw him into the deep end right away, and he struggled. Pandemic year was hard on everybody. Then once the gym opened back up, he was in here every day. I always love when young guys learn from experience and figure out, ‘OK, this is what I have to do.’ And then he went and did it.”
Kerr still didn’t show a ton of trust in Poole entering that second season. He made cameos off the bench but was buried behind Curry, Kelly Oubre, Kent Bazemore and Brad Wanamaker in the backcourt. So the Warriors sent Poole to the G League bubble and, after the type of developmental run the organization couldn’t ignore, he returned to the Warriors and was immediately delivered a rotation role he’d never relinquish.
His third season cements his legacy with the Warriors. Thompson was still out into January, and Poole had become explosive and trusted enough by the veterans to earn that fifth starting spot next to Curry, Wiggins, Green and Looney. Out of the gate, the Warriors ripped off an 18-2 record that re-established them as a title contender. Poole’s fingerprints were all over it.
“He was amazing,” Kerr said. “There were a number of games where he just got caught fire and carried us when we desperately needed it. I remember a game in Phoenix early in the year. I think he had 28 or something at halftime and just went ballistic. It was like we had a new toy. The guys on the team felt like, ‘Oh, man, we got another guy who can go get it.’ It changed our outlook. We were hoping we were a championship contender, but we didn’t know.”
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Poole averaged 20.8 points and made 38 percent of his 3s in his 51 starts that season. In 25 games off the bench, he still gave an efficient 13.7 points on 48 percent shooting, providing an extra scoring guard the Warriors were craving — and probably wouldn’t have survived without — behind Curry.
“We would not have won a championship in ’22 without him,” Thompson said. “Simple as that. So I hope Dub Nation shows him the right ovation on Friday night.”
Thompson’s favorite moment next to Poole came during that 2021-22 regular season. Thompson took his starting spot back from Poole immediately, but there was some versatility to Poole’s skill set. He was Thompson’s backup but also Curry’s. So when Curry went out with a foot sprain in March, Poole stepped in as the starting point guard for the final month.
“There was one game we were starting together where I think I went for 35 and he went for 30,” Thompson said. “We were playing the Jazz and came back from down 20. It was a great moment for us to know, you know, we can do this.”
Thompson’s memory is a point short. He had 36, and Poole had 31. It was the third-to-last game before the playoffs, part of a six-game win streak that allowed the Warriors to hold onto the third seed without Curry. Poole was so productive during that stretch — including an NBA-best 85 made 3s in March and April on better than 40 percent accuracy — that Curry actually came off the bench to open the first round.
Against the Denver Nuggets, Poole scored 30, 29 and 27 points in the first three games of the series. Looney called that his favorite stretch from Poole, remembering one transition 3 against DeMarcus Cousins that had the crowd in a frenzy.
“That’s when I was like, ‘Oh, he’s going to be really good,'” Looney said. “Doing that in his first playoff experience, not nervous? Steph came off the bench, and he still put on a show.”
Poole was so good that Curry opted to stay on the bench for four games to keep Poole’s groove intact. He’d eventually take back that spot, but Poole remained a high-usage bench player for the duration of the playoff run, providing critical production at the most pivotal of times.
Poole identified his favorite game with the Warriors as Game 1 in Memphis. So did Kerr. In the second quarter, Green was ejected for a hard foul on Brandon Clarke. Poole started in Green’s place in the second half. He scored 31 points in 38 minutes, making up for a bad shooting night for Curry and Thompson to get the Warriors a road win in Memphis. They might not win that series if they don’t get that game.
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“Oh, yeah, when we played Tyus (Jones) and them,” Poole said pointing to Jones, now his teammate, at an adjacent locker. “Especially with it being on the road.”
“He bailed us out a lot in that playoff run,” Looney said.
Curry’s three favorite Poole moments all came during the NBA Finals. During that Game 6 clincher in Boston, the Warriors went down eight in the first quarter. But Poole was the major catalyst in a championship-deciding 21-0 run that began late in the first quarter, taking the score from 22-16 Celtics to 37-22 Warriors. A large chunk of that happened with Curry on the bench. Poole hit three 3s during that stint.
“That was a beautiful thing,” Curry said. “But also the half-court shots. Games 2 and 5.”
Curry isn’t one to forget a legendary long-range bomb. He remembered those exactly correct. Poole swished a half-courter to close the third quarter of Game 2 and banked in another deep heave to close the third quarter of Game 5.
“Reminiscent of the three-quarter court shot I hit against Memphis in 2015,” Curry said. “Big, loud momentum plays.”
Here are Poole’s playoff shooting numbers during that 2022 title run: 17 points per game on 51 percent shooting, 39 percent from 3 and 91 percent from the line. He won the free-throw percentage title that season over Curry.
“For him to do what he did,” Kerr said. “Start the first 50 games, cede his position to Klay and then play a huge role in the playoffs. Started games, came off the bench, did everything that we needed Jordan to do.”
It all shifted that fourth season. The punch shook the organization before the season started, and the 3-7 start pushed them into a spiral. Poole was given the keys to a much younger second unit, which featured mismatched and continually changing combinations that included James Wiseman, JaMychal Green, Anthony Lamb, Jonathan Kuminga and Moses Moody. They never found any rhythm.
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In Poole’s third season, the Warriors had the league’s second-best defense. He was a contributing component. Both Mike Brown (the defensive coordinator at the time) and Green were hard on Poole, often scolding him in the moment after mistakes and demanding better.
Green has talked about how he felt he lost his leadership voice in the aftermath of the punch, which is an expected ramification. Even though he gained some of that back team-wide, it was clear he could never lead Poole like before. It also was harder for others to reach Poole for coaching and correction that season, as his role continued to fluctuate wildly and the chemistry and trust and accountability never fully recovered from the preseason incident.
It has led some to wonder whether a stiffer punishment for Green — he left the team for a week in the preseason but didn’t miss a regular-season game — could’ve benefited, especially given the current circumstance surrounding Green.
“Unless you were in this building, you can always talk about what could’ve been punishment-wise,” Curry said. “But unless you were in here, having these conversations daily and everything that we tried to keep in the house that then got out, it made everything a lot more complicated. We obviously will be scrutinized for whatever happens. We did the best we could with a very hard situation. Between them two, that’s whatever it’s going to be between them two.”
Looney and Poole are both from Milwaukee. He might be Poole’s most trusted voice within the Warriors.
“Situation like that, there’s only so much you can do,” Looney said. “Especially with all the coverage we get on our team, all the media and everything that’s going on, the video getting out. I feel like we handled it as best we could. You know, Draymond and JP were professional. They didn’t have no more blow-ups during the season. They might have felt awkward, but they didn’t let it affect their play on the court. They still played hard. They still played together.”
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Winning tends to mask a team’s stink. There were moments within the season when it appeared they were correcting course. Poole averaged 24.6 points per game in his 43 starts. The Warriors climbed out of an early hole to grab the sixth seed in the final week. They beat the Kings in the playoffs and were among the final eight left standing.
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But the Lakers series didn’t go well. They lost in six. Poole and Thompson both struggled to provide secondary scoring next to Curry. The roster and chemistry were deemed flawed and damaged enough that Mike Dunleavy Jr. — a major Poole proponent before the draft and long after — traded him for Chris Paul this summer, generating better financial flexibility in the process.
“I think he got a bad rap for that year,” Looney said. “I mean, he averaged 20 points, and he helped us get to the playoffs. You know, when Steph was down for a while, him and Klay really kept us afloat. We made a run to get out of the Play-In and won a series. So I think he gets a bad rap. It wasn’t all bad that year. It might’ve felt that way.”
Poole didn’t want to predict what kind of reception might be awaiting him Friday night in Chase Center. It’s clear that he’d welcome (and desires) a warm one, but he isn’t one to get sentimental or go too deep on the subject.
“I’ve never had the opportunity to go back and play somewhere where I used to play,” Poole said. “So yeah, kind of just going in, and it should be cool. Spent four years there.”
Green is indefinitely suspended and won’t be in attendance, which perhaps eases any remaining level of tension. Everyone within the organization expects positive vibes and a warm ovation and reunion.
“It was unfortunate what happened because he helped us raise a banner,” Thompson said. “But at the end of the day, time heals all wounds, and Dub Nation will be forever grateful for the Poole Party. I know I will.”
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(Top photo of Jordan Poole with Warriors: Ezra Shaw / Getty Images)