The following is an edited excerpt from our Washington Wizards 2024 NBA Trade Deadline Preview where we evaluated the chances of each player being traded, attempted to accurately identify each player’s trade value, and identified potential trade suitors.
Wizards’ Biggest Name Who Could Be Traded
If Poole’s time in Golden State was a roller coaster, his stint in Washington is a Tilt-a-Whirl: There’s been a lot of spin.
After the Warriors were eliminated from the 2023 playoffs, Poole told Logan Murdock of The Ringer that he didn’t see why he wouldn’t return to the Warriors.
“It wasn’t a bad year. I mean, career highs in two categories,” Poole said back in May after a season where he saw slight upticks in points per game (18.5 to 20.4) and assists per game (4.0 to 4.5) while also setting a career-high in turnovers and recording his lowest PER and field goal percentage since his rookie campaign.
Amazingly, just two months later, Poole was traded to the Wizards.
Four months after the trade, Poole introduced himself at Wizards Media Day, discussing his insights into “what it takes to build a championship culture.”
During the second day of Wizards training camp, Poole reunited with Murdock and explained that in preparation for his lead role in Washington, he had been watching Navy SEAL training videos during the offseason to study how to lead troops.
Minutes after his one-on-one with Murdock, Poole was scheduled to close out the practice by speaking with the remainder of the media (including FortyEightMinutes), though instead of standing with the group of media as his coach and teammate did, Poole asked a staffer for a chair to sit down.
A half-dozen iPhones were pointing down at Poole, recording his boastful words about leadership when a test of the National Emergency Alert System set the devices off, leading Poole to joke that they were ringing for his arrival in Washington.
Allow me to editorialize here: the scene at the Wizards practice facility wasn’t that serious.
Most everyone was laughing with the 24-year-old guard and it had a first-week-of-school vibe to it (as many training camps do). It was less than a week into the Wizards formally ushering in the Poole era and some might say that scene, along with the team-run fashion show the following night, would be a foreshadowing of just how unserious Poole’s debut run with Washington would eventually be.
When evaluating trade value and long-term player projections, antidotes such as Poole’s kickoff in D.C. certainly play a role.
Rival executives might not be in the building every day but there’s plenty of talk around the league in an attempt to gather accurate intel. Executives take note of how players handle themselves in a league with ever-changing situations; Poole’s ongoing scouting report has many chapters.
Poole later describing his arrival in D.C. to Yahoo Sports as a “good situation” to “just kind of have [his] own team” and “play [his] own type of basketball” didn’t go unnoticed around the league.
Poole’s lamenting that he previously “had to fit into the mold” that the Warriors already established in Golden State also didn’t go unnoticed.
That mold produced four championships and six NBA Finals appearances. As of this writing, Poole’s “type of basketball” has produced a total of six regular season wins in Washington.
Less than two weeks after Poole’s comments, there were leaks to well-established national NBA reporters that the Wizards didn’t view Poole as a “cornerstone player” and that the team acquired the point guard in an attempt to rehabilitate his trade value.
Poole had recorded a positive raw plus-minus on just six occasions, resulting in four of Washington’s wins. Through 26 appearances where Poole posted a negative plus-minus, the Wizards are 2-24.
Most statistics should be seen as a means of filtering information rather than a direct line to a conclusion. However, more context behind the plus-minus data here does Poole no favors.
Four of Poole’s top games for the Wizards occurred during wins against:
- The Grizzlies without Ja Morant, leaving 35-year-old Derrick Rose to get significant run.
- The Pistons midway through their historic losing streak.
- The Pacers in their first regular season contest coming off of their In-Season Tournament championship game appearance in Las Vegas.
- The Trail Blazers in a game where the Wizards nearly blew a double-digit fourth-quarter lead.
Through 32 games as a Wizard, Poole owns negative 1.0 win shares, which aside from rookie Scoot Henderson is the lowest mark among the 520 NBA players to see action this season, according to Basketball Reference 01.
Subscribers to Basketball Reference’s win share stat might tell you that means he’s actively taking wins off the table for the Wizards (as few as there were expected to be). Don’t like win shares or plus-minus? There’s a plethora of other performance metrics that tell the same story. Regardless of whether you like numbers or not, it’s safe to say that Poole isn’t producing as a leading option on an NBA team.
The narrative around Poole shifted from a rising leader to a player deserving of intense public criticism to the point where some may deem it as an act of bullying 02.
It now feels a little Grinch-y outlining Poole’s figures. After all, honesty without compassion is cruelty (and I’m sure there’s a sense of apprehension when the Wizards’ PR staff include Poole’s figures as they send postgame statistical highlights to the media on a nightly basis).
To be objective, there is an element of enabling here by the Wizards.
Poole might have believed that he was a rising NBA superstar ready to lead a team to success with his “type of basketball,” though it’s difficult to believe that the Wizards’ decision-makers ever truly did.
Inferring Washington’s Poole Experiment Goals
There’s documented research suggesting that the traits that Poole showcased in Golden State would never translate to true stardom on his own.
In 2010, economists David J Berri and Martin B. Schmidt produced research accounting for what factors produce NBA wins in their 2010 book: Stumbling on Wins.
Taking the inverse of the research, you could easily derive what accounts for losing.
Some time has passed since Stumbling on Wins was published and it’s certainly not the only published research on the subject. Although, Dean Oliver, who is widely known as one of the greatest statistical minds to pour his talents into basketball, is credited with contributing research to the book. Coincidentally, Oliver spent three seasons on the Wizards’ staff from 2020-2023.
Admittedly, the table above is a simplified version of the sophisticated research. Still, it’s easy to infer why the Wizards would allow Poole to spread his wings during a season that the front office has deemed as a tanking “reshaping” campaign.
At least two of the franchise’s objectives with the Poole era are clear:
- Sink further down the NBA’s standings to gain better placement in the 2024 NBA draft lottery, which will ultimately yield the franchise its best draft pick since the early 2010s (the Wizards lose their 2024 first-round pick if it doesn’t fall within the top 12)03.
- Continue to portray and operate the franchise as a player-friendly destination.
By the time the 2024 trade deadline arrives, the Wizards will have played 50 games and will likely be on target to achieve item No. 1. With item No. 2, it’s harder to project exactly what success looks like.
It’s no secret that the Wizards are aiming to become a more attractive free-agent destination and that has factored into how they handle nearly every major situation04.
Part of Russell Westbrook‘s deal in Washington was that the front office would send him to Los Angeles if the opportunity presented itself. With Bradley Beal, leadership gave him the ability to pick his parting destination via his no-trade clause, though chatter around the league indicated that the Wizards would eventually accommodate a Beal trade request even before incorporating the clause into the record-setting $250 million deal.
Poole isn’t in the same tier as Westbrook or Beal, though the Wizards allowed him an opportunity to elevate his career toward star status.
When the Poole experiment comes to an end, the Wizards will likely handle the situation in a way that’ll paint the franchise in a positive light, something that’ll be useful in pitches to future “rising stars” who become available on the market.
Poole’s Contract
Poole has three years and $95.5 million left on his contract after this season.
If Washington wanted to simply shed Poole’s deal without taking back a questionable contract, they’d likely have to attach some compensation.
It’s possible that the front office may not pull the plug so soon given the market dynamics. Whether or not they trade Poole before the deadline (or at the very least reduce his role heading into next season) should signal how long the Wizards plan to remain on the path of devaluing wins.
Regardless, it would be shocking if Poole is on the Wizards the next time this team finishes with a winning record.
Potential Jordan Poole Trade Fits Ahead of 2024 NBA Trade Deadline:
- Chicago Bulls
- Brooklyn Nets
Luckily for the Wizards, no NBA player is truly untradable since there are usually contracts out there perceived as worse than the one on your favorite NBA team’s roster.
The Bulls and Nets are the only teams that stand out as suitors for Poole in the current NBA environment. Chicago’s situation is particularly noteworthy.
The franchise was rumored to be a firesale candidate with Zach LaVine, Alex Caruso, and DeMar DeRozan previously reported as available.
The team has rebounded a bit since those rumblings and there have been reports that the team would like “win-now” pieces if it shuffles the roster. As outlined above, Poole shouldn’t be considered a win-now player in his current role on the Wizards, though as part of a more talented club and in a reserve/decreased role, perhaps he can portray success.
There’s a Lonzo Ball-centered trade that is screaming to be spun as a win-win for the Bulls and Wizards.
Ball remains out with a knee injury and isn’t expected to play this season. Recent reports of Ball making progress in his rehab should be just fine for the Wizards as the team plans for the future (plus as Unseld mentioned, the Wizards have too many bodies on the perimeter anyway).
At first glance, Ball’s contract might seem like… an albatross, as the kids say. In the words of Lee Corso: “Not so fast.”
Assuming Ball’s knee injury isn’t excluded from the league’s disabled players insurance plan (as Amar’e Stoudemire‘s knee injury was with the Knicks), Ball’s full $20.5 million salary this year is estimated to be covered by insurance—given that he has already missed 41-games because of the knee ailment (the deductible) and that Ball’s contract was a top-5 salary on the Bulls when he signed in back in 2021 (the criteria to automatically have a contract enter the insurance plan).
Swapping Poole for Ball, who has just one future year remaining on his contract, would save the Wizards millions this season—even if the coverage of Ball’s salary is prorated. Such a trade would likely net Washington an additional asset or two as well (Patrick Williams stands out as someone who could be targeted).
The league’s insurance plan similarly makes Ben Simmons‘ situation with the Nets more tentable.
Simmons is out indefinitely with a back injury, though he’s making $37.9 million this season and with him missing time over the past two seasons, it’s estimated that he already hit the 41-game deductible, meaning his remaining salary is covered07. If Brooklyn were to trade Simmons in a Poole-headlined deal, I’d estimate that the Wizards would be the team to attach assets (although we would likely be referring to an additional player rather than significant draft capital).
For either Brooklyn or Chicago, taking a spin with Poole would be a calculated risk, one that comes with less downside for the Bulls than the Nets given that Simmons still likely has more trade value than Ball.
The Best-case scenario for the Bulls: Poole is an entertaining contributor in a reasonable role as they attempt to turn around their season, providing more on-court value than Ball was able to provide because of his injury.
The worst-case scenario for the Bulls? Poole doesn’t make personal adjustments when traded to the Bulls and continues to struggle, though instead of shutting him down, Chicago can fully employ Poole’s “type of basketball” later in the season, giving the point guard a chance to secure 2024 draft positioning for two franchises.
Read More: Full Wizards trade deadline preview, including which players who are likely to be traded ahead of February 8.
