Poole’s overall body of work doesn’t keep pace with Arenas or Harden. On the other hand, he won’t be able to play in the space created by Stephen Curry, and Poole’s efficiency dropped when Curry wasn’t on the floor. Will he improve? Well, on one hand, he’ll have more freedom to make plays in DC than he did in Golden State. If the ortg ticks up to average or better on high usage, he could be quite valuable and still fall well short of what Harden and Arenas did. Poole’s efficiency, while below average, has still been good enough to think that he’ll have offensive value even if it doesn’t improve. His efficiency dipped a bit in his second season when his usage ramped from 21.6% to 26.3%, but his ortg remained a bit ahead of average and when seeing him play, it was apparent he was a talented youngster learning how to succeed in the NBA. The numbers show Arenas was a very good offensive weapon with the Warriors. That’s efficiency of +19.4 points per 100 possessions relative to average. Even with a usage rate of just 20.4%, there was every reason to think how he played would scale to a bigger role - especially since his third season included a preposterous 124 ortg on 21.4% usage. Harden was an offensive monster before changing teams. Poole - league average: 112.4 Poole average: 108 relative ortg: -4.4.Arenas - league average: 104.1 Arenas average: 109 relative ortg: +5.1.Harden - league average: 106.5 Harden average: 118 relative ortg: +11.5.Here’s league average efficiency for each player during the years before they changed teams, and their offensive rating relative to league environment: Except, league context changed significantly. On quick glance, you might think Arenas and Poole are a fair comparison. Arenas’ ortg was 109 before coming to Washington. His offensive rating (points produced per 100 individual possessions) was 118 before he went to the Rockets. At the simplest look, Harden is way ahead of the other two. I’ll start with efficiency since that’s the single most important stat. On-court performance is where the comps break down. He was the 28th overall selection in the 2019, and enters the first year of the four-year, $123 million contract he signed before last season. Poole is entering his age 24 season, which will be the fifth year of his career. And Harden had been a sixth man through his first three seasons. OKC’s management was concerned about building a complete team around three maximum salary players - Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, and Harden (if they had given him the max deal he wanted). Harden was 23 and entering his fourth NBA season when the Oklahoma City Thunder traded him to the Houston Rockets. While the Warriors technically had the right to match any offer, they didn’t have Bird rights (Arenas had just two seasons under contract with the team) and were limited to offering the Mid-Level Exception. It was just his third NBA season - he’d slipped to the second round of the draft and signed the then-standard two-year minimum salary contract. Arenas was entering his age 22 season when he signed with the Wizards as a free agent. Here’s the summary.Īs mentioned above, Arenas, Harden and Poole were at similar ages and points of their career. I talked about it on the latest episode of my #SoWizards podcast, which I invite you to give a listen. Both Poole and Arenas got their starts with the Golden State Warriors before coming to Washington.īut since it’s out there, and I’m getting asked about it, let’s actually make the comparison. I get the comp - there’s a superficial similarity because all three are guards who changed teams young. If you pay much attention to NBA discourse, you’ve probably heard comparisons of new Wizards guard Jordan Poole to James Harden or Gilbert Arenas. But please, let’s have these historical comps at least make sense. As a summer full of doppelgänger machine articles shows, I’m not averse to comparing current NBA players to those who came before.
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