He WAS a good player at Michigan. I didn’t say he wasn’t. But, for context here, Poole shot 32.7% as a soph in conference play whereas Caleb Houstan shot 39%. And when thet both left, many people here said the exact same things: not ready, shoulda come back.
Personally I think Poole is way more talented but here’s hoping that Houstan blows up in the NBA too and a few years from now we’ll all be lionizing him too and have forgotten that he too had weaknesses and they were on display and observable.
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.
Those three losses were PAINFUL. He did make some bad mistakes in the latter two in particular that I remember. But if there are people who can only remember the bad, I think that this thread shows there are also people who can only remember the good. There’s a Goldilocks take between those two extremes.
Other limited stories: "Poole is very mature’'. “Poole doesn’t play D”. “Poole ranked in the 92nd percentile in ball screen scoring efficiency”. “Poole is uncoachable” (not my words)
The good thing is that there are many data points available that can all be combined into something a lot more nuanced than a hot take or a half-baked reaction.
The Ringer posted a piece ranking the NBA “young cores” (a typical pre-season content filler if there ever was one). Poole gets a lot of good publicity in it, Diabate gets a positive mention, and Franz is spoken of highly if briefly. Somewhat to my surprise, Caleb Houstan doesn’t get a single mention. Obviously the Magic have a lot of young players to talk about and they spend their time discussing how one of their young guards needs to play well, but still thought he might get a mention.
I liked how the roster fits in Orlando with Franz and Paolo which allows Cole Anthony to play his game without trying to be a playmaker. They probably can get away without a true PG because of Franz and Paolo as a creator
The way one establishes that he doesn’t dislike Poole is to not grab every opportunity to diminish him. I suspect you think its providing balance. It is not.
