Michigan Players in the NBA

What did Klay say?

About what?

somehow I find myself thinking Hack is being too rough on both Poole and Draymond in terms of their overall character (I’ve heard nothing to suggest Poole is a jerk, and I don’t at all agree Draymond is going to get busted for assault when he retires), which seems really hard!

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Poole. He’s said a bit, in words and body language. Lately and last season too. And some of that you can file as older, slower player recovering from injury looking at his heir apparent. no doubt. But not all of it.

No longer an Athletic subscriber, but the well-remembered piece BQ did from the sidelines with the Beilein/Poole exchange would be a good starting point – an example of, if not ā€œactively ignoring ordersā€ then ā€œblowing off the coach trying to coach himā€. I also cited other examples. None of this is Iverson Practice Rant level stuff, but it’s there.

I’ll take it. Better to be accused of being too hard on both than on just one.

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To be fair, Poole did lobby in a nationally televised post game interview during the playoffs that he should start over Klay.

I don’t think it makes him a jerk, but could also see why Klay wouldn’t care for it.

I don’t think he’s a jerk either. But even guys who aren’t that brazen about themselves still aren’t gonna be everyone’s cup of tea.

Irrational Jordan Poole hate among some factions of the Michigan fan base is apparently slow to die.

He’s in line for a $100 million contract after being a late first round pick when most of the same people said he shouldn’t be drafted and wouldn’t be a good pro. He spent a year in the G-League, worked on his game and cracked the rotation for one of the best run teams in the league. Then made dozens of key plays in the playoffs. But he’s somehow hard to coach.

Hmmm. :thinking:

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This is Local Fluff a bit but I’ve never interpreted anything Klay did towards JP as actual disdain. Mostly curmudgeonly vet stuff

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@umhoops, that’s ridiculous. He wouldn’t be the first very good player and playmaker to get paid and be worth it who is, also, hard to coach. He got more P/R touches as a soph than Nik Stauskas and was dissatisfied with his role. BQ documented an example; those of you with an Athletic login can refresh your memories should you have forgotten. Any one of you is 15 seconds from watching Klay Thompson react on Youtube to Poole in a way that’s pretty uncommon for NBA players to react. And 15 seconds from watching Klay Thompson discuss Poole needing a humbling.

Rational: gathering up the data points that exist for this player but not too many others, and considering what that evidence suggests.

Irrational: not doing that.

I think you can’t ignore that angle. Poole will take Klay’s job soon. There’s no doubt that it’s a factor. And I think that it’s also pretty likely that, sooner rather than later, things are smoothed over between Poole and Green. Green himself IIRC used to brag about how fights in practice in EL actually helped create those bonds, and how he brought that mentality to GSW and how it helped them be a tougher team.

But that does not negate the presence of media in the public domain demonstrating that Poole generates a level of frustration, and you can’t replicate that body of evidence for most NBA players.

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So your case that he’s not coachable comes down to a quote his dad gave after he declared for the NBA Draft, an anecdote in a story that Brendan wrote while sitting in the front row (which I’m pretty sure was late in a blowout win?), frustration on the court between teammates and some random clips of Klay saying something about humbling him?

The kid has played a ton of different roles really well for a bunch of winning teams and played for really good coaches. That’s way better evidence that he’s coachable.

People (a subset of Michigan fans mostly) want to feel a certain way about Jordan because of how his sophomore year ended IMO. He definitely has a unique personality – from cats to irrational confidence to overly kind to slightly cocky and maybe aloof at times – but that’s very different than saying he’s not coachable.

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The Klay comment on Poole about humbling him was in jest.

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Exactly my point.

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Draymond must get in players’ faces a lot in practice. No one even looked in their direction until he threw the punch.

I think it’s an established fact that he does. A few weeks ago Klay jokingly referred to Dray as ā€œwarriors HRā€ and these were ā€œperformance reviewsā€

I think the point you’re making is valid as a counter to someone saying that the guy is absolutely not coachable. Which isn’t me. I’ve steered clear of those kinds of absolutes, as you can read in the thread. As I’ve said, this doesn’t rise to the level of an Iverson Practice Rant or anything like that. On a spectrum from, say, Spurs era Dennis Rodman to, say, Spurs-era Tim Duncan, Poole exists somewhere in between. I see no purpose in pretending he’s as easy to coach as Tim Duncan, even as a reaction to the imagined argument (as distinct from the one I’m making) that he’s as hard to coach as Dennis Rodman.

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Yeah. Poole deserves some light-hearted ribbing for being who he is. Klay gives it to him at the Goldilocks level.

This isn’t hard.

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I think everyone knows Dray has a history. Goes back to Durant and others. Usually able to patch it up for the good of the team, but this was way over the top, and with the video leak on top of it, going to be interesting to see how the Warriors handle it.

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I guess that’s true but your words were ā€œhe is hard to coachā€ and I don’t think that being deserving of light hearted ribbing is the same thing as being hard to coach