Late on Wednesday night, the Golden State Warriors were dealt a significant blow when superstar Stephen Curry was forced to leave the game with a foot injury. Long forgotten worries about the guard’s ankle issues began rising to the surface again in a moment of real panic. Then, the prognosis came through.
In the end, it’s a sprained foot, which has likely ended Curry’s regular season, and with it, his slim chances of winning the MVP award again, despite his best efforts. Although it could have been worse, it has felt like the Warriors have been slacking since Draymond Green’s worrisome back injury. He might be back now, but the team was still clearly trying to get back to their blistering early season form.
In moments like this, with the Stephen Curry injury, there are often players who answer the call and rise to the challenge for their franchise. Right now, Jordan Poole looks like that guy.
Not Klay Thompson, you ask? The guy who, despite looking a touch (or two, or three…) slower with his defensive duties, has had several signature offensive nights since coming back from a whole pandemic’s worth of time off the court with some of the worst injuries a player can sustain.
So no, asking Thompson to step into the void created by Curry is not a smart move. It’s better to let him continue along at his own pace, which has been working pretty well so far, in hopes that come postseason time, he is even closer to himself.
Instead, it simply has to be Jordan Poole, and for good reason. For starters, this is a role he has auditioned for in the past. When Curry was out with a broken wrist and Green was disinterested because the Warriors were really bad, it was Poole who went out there and did his best impression of Curry as often as he could.
To be clear, Poole is neither as consistent from deep nor as special at creating space as his perennial All-Star counterpart. But with only 12 regular-season games left, his game is tailor-made to keep the Warriors above water, and hopefully, hold onto that second seed in an always improving Western Conference.
In case you’d forgotten, Poole is still somehow only 22 years old. After impressing last year and averaging 12 points and a shade over 35 percent from deep, he has quietly turned it up a notch this season. We say quietly because the old trio of Curry, Thompson, and Green has rightly dominated the headlines, and because rookie Jonathan Kuminga has looked super intriguing.
So, too has James Wiseman, but for all of the wrong reasons, as he hasn’t played this year. Andrew Wiggins was somehow an All-Star starter and Moses Moody has begun to find his role as well. Yet through all of this, Poole has averaged a whopping 17.1 points per game, taking over seven three-pointers a night (5.4 last season), and seeing his percentage from deep rise to 36.1 percent.
He has done this despite starting only 39 of the 64 games he has appeared in. This means you could also make the case that he is a legitimate Sixth Man of the Year candidate. He won’t win that award (thanks to Tyler Herro), but to provide such consistent scoring whether starting or off the bench is fabulous. And it’s even better when the Warriors know they can start him if needed, and because he has closed games before too.
Poole has quietly done a bit of everything offensively for the group, but these 12 games represent a chance to go back to the Curry-lite version of him that we have already seen. Sure, this might cause his percentages to drop, but the fact head coach Steve Kerr can trust him in a Curry-like role for some minutes during a game is huge.
In fact, there aren’t many guys at all across the league who have and can do this as seamlessly as Poole does. The key difference now is that the games really matter, and with that will come extra pressure. But Poole never had the chance to play with Thompson while assuming this role, and his time spent on the court with Green was also limited in the past.
The Warriors have one of the easier remaining schedules in the league, which will provide Poole with plenty of opportunities to prove he can help carry the franchise to the playoffs. All was not perfect before the Stephen Curry injury either, with the team ranking just above league average (14th, 115.1) in offensive rating over the last 15 games.
This is the unexpected chance to gear Curry up for the postseason and have his potential heir apparent get a feel for what it is like to be one of the main men for a championship-caliber team when the games really matter. There is no better man for this moment than Jordan Poole. He has done it before and you can be sure he is about to do it again.