NBA Draft: Zion Williamson still first in 2019 Redraft

To this point in our 2019 Redraft, anyone who watched the 2019-20 NBA season but then took a year off would be mostly nodding their head. Keldon Johnson, Brandon Clarke and Cameron Johnson all moved up, but they all had fairly solid rookie seasons that justified that movement to some extent. Taking Jordan Poole with the eighth pick would blow their minds.

Injuries up-and-down the Golden State Warriors’ roster forced Poole into action as a rookie, and he was not good. He shot just 33.3 percent from the field, a frosty 27.9 percent from 3-point range, and managed to make nearly every defensive mistake in the book. He logged over 1200 minutes, and only towards the very end of the season did he show flashes that he might be able to improve as a player.

Then came the long offseason that the worst teams in the league received, and Poole clearly worked on his game. A stint in the G League Bubble this past season showed off a confident and much more efficient player, one who averaged 22.4 points per game on 45.1 percent from the field; not elite, but certainly not the damaging player he was as a rookie.

That confidence carried over into the rest of the season with the Warriors, as Poole morphed into a deserving sixth man, even closing some games alongside Stephen Curry in the backcourt. The pinnacle of the season came in the team’s penultimate regular-season game, when Curry sat for rest and Poole dropped 38 points and six assists.

The former Michigan guard is a decent point guard and an even better 2-guard, with excellent decision-making skills and a shot that is growing more versatile by the month. He has stepped up as a defensive player as well; no one will ever mistake him for a stopper, but he isn’t easily picked on anymore. At 6’4″ he has the size to hold his own.

It’s possible that the Jordan Poole we saw over the last three months of the season is a mirage of sorts, a hot streak helped along by being in the orbit of human supernova Curry. More likely, this was a display of the player Poole is becoming, and that player could help the New Orleans Pelicans build a young core around Zion Williamson. They originally took center Jaxson Hayes; here they take a better player at a more important position.