Poole playd over half his minutes without Steph (1300 of 2280) and almost none with Klay.
I know most NBA teams don’t even have a Charles or a Zavier, but he wasn’t out there with premium or even good shooting very often.
It’s getting into semantics, and I realize there is no victory for me here but if his potential was 60% true shooting at 26% usage (what he did last year) Id have a hard time saying he played to it (if he had he’d be a lottery pick)
The only other argument is to say Michigan wasn’t built to utilize his tools to the fullest, which I guess is a similar statement to my original.x
I mean, he was 19 years old and played a key role on a top-five team all year. Shot the ball extremely well, took tough shots and was the secondary ball screen guy. I’m not saying he was his fully realized self (aren’t most good NBA players way better in the NBA than they were in college?) but it wasn’t like he wasn’t good.
As I said, it’s the defense that’s so much different in the NBA which makes playing offense different. The ability to load up the paint really makes life much more difficult for playmakers in college – especially without shooting around them. It also wasn’t just that U-M had poor shooting around, it was that those shooters needed someone to space the floor for them which was the role Jordan played.
Also, Poole was supposed to have had this disappointing sophomore year by so many people’s standards yet he played 83% of minutes on an elite team, had a 57.3 TS% on 20% usage, shot 37% from three on over 200 attempts.
Sure, but there are also such a thing as all American and All conference guards.
His NBA career suggests that was in the cards.
I’d also just point to how awful he was as a rookie in the NBA and how good he is now - he went from literally not remotely prepared to play an NBA minute to extremely good offensively.
Like, the vast majority of what he is today owes nearly nothing to what he got in his two UM years.
He basically xeroxed Rahkman’s senior year the season prior. Rahkman was good! But I mean not really the level he had in him.
Based on what? I don’t understand a statement like that. I think you are dramatically underselling the physical maturation and natural reps that it takes to become good at basketball at the highest level.
The fact that he wasn’t ready to play in the NBA when he left Michigan at 19 doesn’t mean that he didn’t develop at Michigan.
During his time at U-M, I would say he was probably one of the most impressive on-ball creators guards of Beilein’s era. I think the potential to grow into what he has become was pretty clear and certainly worth taking a gamble on.
Yeah, bad shooting months happen. He shot 26% from 3-point range in February this year for Golden State… the year that he’s going to parlay into a $100 million contract. A shooting slump – and shooting 33% from 3 while taking a lot of difficult shots isn’t that bad – doesn’t mean he wasn’t a good player when he was at Michigan.
Basically the eval of Poole for a lot of people is that U-M lost those games to MSU and he made some bad mistakes in key moments in both. That seems to skew people away from everything that he did well that year.
All in all, it is a truly bizarre final year for Beilein. That team was a few breaks away from arguably being Beilein’s best team and somehow it is the most hated
Then Beilein just left out of the blue and we are left with a very strange final chapter.
I remember telling friends that Michigan fans were really going to be frustrated with Poole in his sophomore year. Part of it was, after that big shot in the tournament, there was nowhere to go but down. And part was that his errors (mostly on the defensive end) were easy for even casual fans to see and his demeanor could be read (fairly or not) as too carefree.
Also have to remember JP was an awful nba player at first. So not sure there’s an argument he wasn’t used right when it took multiple more years of full time development to get where he got
JP’s role at Michigan was significantly more on ball then it was at LaLu. Was LaLu wrong for that? Or did JP just continually improve at every level?
Right, but Kansas was quite clearly the favorite. There’s a difference between thinking that team was good enough to make a run, which it was, and acting like they were favorites. There was a very large gap between them and the actual favorites.
Yup, the rules and spacing are so different between college and NBA (also FIBA and NBA are also different in how the game is being played). I’ve spoken to a few players who have played in the NBA and they all told me that the spacing is wide open compared to college level and how much easier it is to get to the rim because of defensive 3 second rule, 3 pt line, no handcheck and better shooters.
I’m sorry so why do dozens of other guards crack the paint and score in NCAA basketball?
Poole doesn’t seem to be lacking on-ball skills.
Was it because he didn’t have the ball much?
We’re acting like guards can’t succeed in college basketball or something? (Yes this is an exaggeration). Did I concoct Ayo Dosunmu in a fever dream? Jaden Ivey?
Ivey will look way better in the NBA. Franz looked way better in the NBA. That’s all, not that they can’t be effective.
It’s just the typical BS defenses that make Jaden Ivey look bad late in the season and force Purdue to flame out of the NCAA Tournament don’t really exist in the NBA. Individual offensive talent can flourish.
Same ratio, but 75% of the usage seems relevant? I don’t think it’s nuts to say that a borderline all-star nba guard whose height was all conference honorable mention left some meat on the bone here?
I mean, he was a sophomore on a top five team that had multiple returners who just went to the Final Four. I’m not exactly sure what role you wanted him to have?
The larger point about the defensive differences is that they made Poole’s ability to space the floor and playing that role even more important because you need to try to do anything to create space. Matthews and Simpson could not create that space for Poole.
Poole’s sophomore year he ranked in the 92nd percentile in ball screen scoring efficiency. He was really good.
If your point is just that Poole wasn’t an AA as a sophomore (when you already pointed out he wasn’t ready to contribute in the NBA the next year), then I’m not sure I get what point that’s making.
I just think Poole has always been a gifted shot creator with unique range/confidence and he’s gotten better basically every year of his career. Even as he’s leveled up, he’s always really been the same guy.
Exactly. Bigger court too. It’s like a completely different game in a lot of ways.