Stop the presses! The Washington Wizards traded for a first-round pick. More importantly, Chris Paul will be helping out an old thorn in the side, the Golden State Warriors. The Athletics’ Shams Charania reports that the Warriors are sending Jordan Poole, a protected first-round pick from 2030 and a second-round pick from 2027, to Washington in exchange for Paul.
For years, Steph Curry and the Warriors terrorized Paul on the field, who was repeatedly thwarted by the LA Clippers and Houston Rockets. Now he’ll be looking to help that core of players win their fifth NBA championship and finally get their first title. The exodus continues for the Wizards as they seemingly trade a day in Michael Winger’s front-office era, but this time some long-term real assets are returning to them.
Let’s pull out the red pencil and give this trade some marks.
The Warriors’ takeover of Chris Paul
This is an intriguing deal for the Warriors in more ways than one. Let’s get to the basketball page first.
How does Paul fit into what the Warriors are doing on the pitch?
One of their biggest problems last season was Poole’s regression (we’ll get to that in a moment). When Curry was on the touchline, the Warriors didn’t always have an offensive power that called the shots. It’s always an adventure for the Warriors when Curry leaves a game, but offensive performance dropped 7.7 points per 100 possessions last season when Curry was on the bench. With Poole on the bench, it was 6.0 points per 100 possessions more than with him in the game. Much of this is curry’s dynamic on/off numbers.
In the playoffs, those numbers were astronomically worse. In 13 postseason games, without Curry in the game, offense dropped 24.2 points per 100 possessions. It was less dramatic with Poole’s numbers, as the game was only 3.8 points worse per 100 possessions with Poole than without him. That’s because they tried to pair him with Curry as much as possible in the shorter rotation.
CP3’s ability to lead an offense should fix that, except Paul’s style and Warriors’ style clash quite a bit. Paul loves a slow, methodical analysis of offense that leads to lots of pick and rolls (sometimes good) and isolation mismatches against switches. The Warriors play with flow, pace and ball movement when things are going smoothly. Media superstar Jason Concepcion compared the style clash between a player and a team acquiring that player to the time Shaquille O’Neal transferred to the Phoenix Suns.
From Poole’s point of view we will now find out if the reasons for the inconsistency and poor play with him on the field last season had to do with a regression in his game or maybe it just had to do with Green Poole struck in a workout and the video leaked to the public. The Warriors’ culture seemed shaken after the incident last season. And maybe there would always be a step backwards. Maybe the Warriors had an accidental title win last season, or it was just natural for things to go back to the mean.
However, comments throughout the season seemed to indicate that nothing was ever smoothed over. Poole became a bloated contract with absolutely no consistency. In the postseason he was a disaster, shooting 34.1 percent from the field and needing 135 shot attempts to have 134 playoff points. It was nothing compared to what we saw in the title race season. The fact that Poole became a terrible contract that the Warriors had to get off their books had both financial reasons, with the new punitive luxury tax rates of the contract era, and basketball-related reasons, because he would never be preferred to trying to keep Green .
It’s a necessary step, but we don’t know if the styles will get used to each other. At least they’re out of trouble for Poole on the money and CP3 can be a steadier hand off the bench as long as his 38-year-old physique keeps up. Now let’s see if this is essentially culture addition by subtraction.
Grade B
The Wizards get Jordan Poole, Ryan Rollins, a protected first-rounder from 2030 and a second-rounder from 2027
The Wizards finally secured a first-round pick from the Bradley-Beal trade! For a young security guard who makes a lot of money, it was only necessary to transfer Paul.
Seriously, let’s see what all this could mean for the future of the Wizards. Poole is the perfect player type for a tank team. He’ll shoot a lot, have complete freedom on offense, have no expectations of a winning basketball, and his scoring will be phenomenal. He could easily score 25 points a game next season and that could undercut his target. He’ll bring a lot of highlights to the fan base and that can distract from how bad this team’s basketball could be overall.
Poole is by no means a lost cause. There is real talent, but the cloak of Warriors success and system will no longer be there to hide its weaknesses. The spotlight is fading, which is good, but bad habits can be reinforced in the chaotic environment of rebuilding. It will be important for Wes Unseld Jr. and his company to find ways to improve his skills as it could be a bad contract for them.
Some of the setbacks in the Beal trade and Kristaps Porziņģis trades this week were in reaction to how good it was for the Wizards to get the books off the Beal funds. And there’s some truth to that. There’s no point paying a lot of money to a player like Beal when you want a fresh start and he hasn’t led you to wins at all. The criticism was never about getting rid of Beal. It was about the lack of return for him. Pick swaps and second-round picks didn’t seem to suit his talent, while Jrue Holiday and Rudy Gobert opted for insane amounts of first-round picks, no-trade clause or not.
If you’re worried about sorting out the future of this franchise, I’m not sure $125 million for Poole over the next four years will solve the problem. You need to be convinced that Poole is a future part of this franchise, or someone who can eventually redeem his commercial value to the point of justifying his contract so you can trade it for something good. Both seem unclear to me, but that’s not my job. It’s up to the wizards.
Getting a protected first-round pick from the Warriors in 2030 is important. The Warriors probably won’t be able to compete at this point unless they’re really ahead, and we have no idea what’s in store for us seven years from now. This could end up being a valuable choice for the Wizards, or a trade chip, or a choice whose protections wear off over time after 2030.
Grade: B-minus
related reading
Harper: Instant response with Smart, Porziņģis on the move
Hollinger: Why the Porziņģis-Smart trade is a win for Grizzlies, Celtics and Wizards
(Photo by Chris Paul and Jordan Poole: Mark J. Rebilas / USA Today)