Hoops Tonight - Reaction to Chris Paul trade to Warriors, Jordan Poole to Wizards

before we get started. Subscribe to the volumes YouTube channels. You don't miss anymore of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at Underscore Jason Lts. You guys don't miss any show announcements. And if, for whatever reason, you guys miss one of these shows and you can't get back over to YouTube to finish, don't forget. You can find them wherever you get your podcasts. Under Hoops Tonight. Also, last

but not least, don't forget. Earlier today, we did a breakdown of the Celtics trade that brought in Chris hops Porzingis and sent Marcus Smart to the Boston Celtics. We also hit on Scoot Henderson versus Brandon Miller. We also hit on Damian Lillard with the Portland Trailblazers, and a little bit on the job rates suspension, and then later tonight, don't forget, We're going live with the guys from Nerd Session and Colin Coward to break down the NBA Draft.

So the deal, the machinations of the deal send Jordan Poole to the Washington Wizards, as well as a heavily protected first round pick top twenty protected and a second round pick as well. Reports show that the Warriors intend to keep Chris Paul and use him on their basketball team. No intend to waive him, at least at this point. I thought this was a truly bizarre trait from the

standpoint of the Warriors. These are two big time conflicting basketball identities that are going to have to fix fit together. So let's start there and kind of branch out. So Chris Paul is a very high volume pick and roll ball handler. He only played fifty nine games this year and still amounted thirty four pick and rolls, and he's still very good at it. By the way, one of only fifteen players will run over a thousand pick and

rolls in the league this year. Finished seventh in efficiency on pick and rolls on that list, averaging one point zero six to six points per possession, which is very good. So Chris Paul is a extremely high volume ball handler who is still very good at it. The problem is is only the Nuggets and Kings run fewer pick and rolls than the Golden State Warriors. Do they run a

motion offense? What does that mean? So instead of dribbling about the floor, spacing the floor properly and bringing up a ball screen to run, or maybe running something that flows into a ball screen like a ram screen where he screened down for the screener or some sort of off ball action, the most teams in the NBA run that. They just bring the ball to the floor, they space, They might run something that flows into their pick and roll,

but they're mostly running pick and roll right. What makes the teams like the Warriors, Kings, and Nuggets very unique is they usually enter their offense in different ways. So the Nuggets do a lot of post ups right through Nikola jokicch and they run a lot of dribble handoffs. The Kings run just a ton of dribblendoff because they want to weaponize demonic Sabonis and his ability to play make out of that triple threat and fake handoffs and

things like that. Right, Well, the Warriors same sort of thing. They typically run multiple non shooters on the floor at any given time. Right So they'll have Draymond Green out there, but they'll also have a guy like Gary Payton or a guy like Kevon Looney on the floor at the same time. And so what they always try to do is invert their spacing. They don't want to space the floor with those guys because it's just difficult to do. The timing has to be perfect in that pick and

roll situation. So typically they like to invert and bring the two non shooters out to the perimeter and just run a ton of screening actions, usually five man screening actions, full blown plays. They will run down and run sets rather than just free flowing basketball more than any team in the NBA by a significant margin. And so with the way that they like to play, Chris Paul's a very different type of player to try to cram into

that spot. To give you an idea, Chris Paul took a shot coming off of a screen just three times all season. Okay, the Golden State Warriors run more off screen plays than anybody in the league by a mile. They run eleven point seven per game, and no one else in the league runs more than nine. So you're taking one of the guys that almost never runs an off screenplay and bringing him into a team that almost only runs off screenplays relative to the rest of the league.

So it's definitely a very bizarre type of fit there. So the question is what are they going to do to make Chris Paul fit offensively with this team. Pick and roll with the Warriors is more of a break glass in case of emergency thing. In a late game situation, they might start running STEPH pick and roll. In a playoff series, when teams start to scheme away their sets and ignore their non shooters, they might start going to STEPH pick and roll, but they don't run it very frequently.

So the question is what's gonna happen. Are the Warriors going to change the way they run offense to allow Chris to fit or is Chris gonna change the way that he plays to fit into what Golden State does. My guess is they'll meet in the middle. First of all, CP three has a bad injury history. He is he has suffered an injury in the playoff run in four

of the last six seasons. Two of them he played through and played very poorly compared to what he played like beforehand, and then in the two others he straight up had to miss games. And so with his injury history, chances are they'll probably just cut his minutes way down. With the Suns, he's still running like thirty two minutes a game and still playing sixty sixty five games in the season. My guess is the Warriors cut him way down, bring him down to like fifty five games, bring him

down to like twenty eight minutes. And if you stagger him with Steph, like if Steph plays, if Steph is playing, you know, thirty five minutes a game, then that means there's thirteen minutes a game when STEP's off the floor. So if you run half of Chris Paul's minutes when STEP's off, then you only have to try to make it work for like seven minutes a half, Right, That's what I expect them to do. So the question is when they're both on the floor, how will they play?

Because my guess is when Steph's on and CB three's off, they'll just play Warriors basketball, and when CB three's on and steps off, my guess is they run a lot more pick and roll. But when they're both on the floor, that'll be the interesting element. So, like I said earlier, he did very rarely run off screen plays, very rarely run dribble handoffs. He only ran thirty three drible handoffs all year, while the Warriors were third in DHO frequency.

But he's a very good spot up player. Chris was one of the best spot up players in the league this year. He averaged one point two to nine points per possession in spot up situations. That ranked sixth out of two hundred and fifty seven players to log at least one hundred possessions, and Steph was second on that list. Right, Steph is obviously the best shooter of all time and was the second best spot up player to log at

least one hundred possessions last year. So what I expect to happen is when they're both on the floor, they'll probably lean a little bit more into the pick and roll side of their offense for starters. I think that's a direction the Warriors have needed to go for a while. I think they've leaned too heavily on their motion offense at times. Running more pick and roll over the course of the season, even with Steph, will help them be better prepared when they have to lean heavily on pick

and roll in the playoffs, which they inevitably have to do. Also, Steph and Chris and their inability to play off the ball at least in spot up situations, will give them the ability to play pick and roll with each other on the floor. The question will primarily have to do with the defensive end, but we'll get to that in

a minute. I do think offensively it will work. I just think the way they'll have to play will have to lean a little bit more towards the way Chris likes to play than the way the Warriors like to play, which may end up being a good thing simply because of the direction the Warriors need to go. The thing that's gonna be tricky is like, I don't know if

Chris can run that much. He's like Chris Paul has always been a player who strangles the pace of games, brings the ball up, slowly, gets guys in their spots, and methodically runs pick and roll, whereas the Warriors are like a let's push in transition. If we don't get anything, we're going into our motion. And every one of those dudes is just running like figure eights the whole damn game.

There's constantly running off the screens and running and running and running and again with inverted spacing, what they're hoping is by bringing the bigs out to run dribble handoffs and set wide pin downs, they're bringing the screen defenders out right because they have to show on players coming off of screens and shooting. And that's just an interesting situation to throw Chris in because he's never been the guy who flies off a screen and takes a shot.

Jordan Poole would, Steph Curry would, Klay Thompson would, And so that's why I think they'll probably lean more into pick and roll when Chris is on the floor, even with Steph. But there is a lot of potential upside here.

Like I mentioned before, the Warriors almost always have to default to Steph high pick and roll in the late playoff rounds, and CP three just gives you a better opportunity to lessen Steph's workload, right, You're taking some of that some of those responsibilities off of his plate and

allowing him to take more possessions off. That makes it so fatigue plays a lesser role, so that maybe when he takes that tough step back one legged shot over Anthony Davis or that pull up three over Anthony Davis, maybe he has a little more lift because he ran ten fewer picking rolls in the fourth quarter, and that alleviates some of that fatigue and gives him a better chance. I think some of that that sharing the loads, so

to speak, will really help. The tricky thing is gonna be is that's kind of what Jordan Poole was doing. And so if you look at the Jordan Poole role, Chris Paul's probably a more consistent veteran presence. Young players are more volatile, older players are more consistent. The difference is I thought Jordan Poole was a better fit in the Warriors offense. He was a good player in the motion offense. You could come off with dribble handoffs and

get downhill really easily. And Chris Paul's just different. And Jordan Poole in particular, was the only Warrior who could consistently generate rim pressure because he's so damn fast and so I would have rather personally used the Jordan Poole contract on a player that can bring real rim pressure so intummation it can work, and Chris Paul is a super smart player who can figure out how to fit in.

My concerns are can he stay healthy? How will they fit with their different play styles, which we went over, and then big the big one for me is does he make the Warriors too small? So we already figured out from the Jordan Poole experience. If you play Jordan Poole with Steph and Klay Thompson, Andrew Wiggins and Jerry mut Green, they're too small right that the Pool party lineup or whatever they call it. That lineup struggled a lot, in large part because they were too small and they

didn't defend well enough. Chris Paul at this phase of his career doesn't move well and is not a very good defensive player, and so it'll be really interesting to see if that becomes a problem. Also, just in general, Jordan Pool is a much better athlete than Chris Paul. So if you bring in Chris Paul and you're running Jordan Poole or excuse me, Steph Curry with Chris Paul and Klay Thompson in your backcourt? Are you too small and too unathletic to compete in the physical areas of

the game. That's going to be the interesting question that we're going to find out the answer to. So, and then lastly, like, was it the right use of Pool's contract? Like, I understand his values probably lower now than it was last year coming off of a rough playoff run, but he's still a very interesting young player. And yeah, he's gonna make a lot of money, but we're heading into a stretch where the NBA salary CAP's going to go

up significantly in the next few years. So is it actually kind of a decent deal to have a player like that? And would it have been better off? You know, would the Warriors have been better off trying to I don't know, you know, make a move for a forward, a bigger forward that can slot between Andrew Wiggins and Draymond Green, give them a better chance to hang physically with teams and give them a better opportunity to generate shots through something other than a primary ball handler from

the perimeter. So a guy you could turn his back to the basket and back people down and get easy shots that way. That would have been the direction that I would have gone. As you guys remember me talking about this summer, I really wanted them to even if it meant be patient, like wait till the deadline. Maybe you wait till the deadline and you can make the same deal for Kyle Kuzma, you know, or something along those lines. But this is the direct they went, and

so we're gonna have to see how it works. And again, really smart franchise, really smart player, they'll probably find a way to make it fit on offense. I'm more just concerned about their overall sizing athleticism issues, especially in a Western Conference that's dominated by the Denver Nuggets. Last, but not least, the Jordan Pool to the Wizard side of this trade. You guys know how I feel about young

basketball players. They typically don't know how to win. It's rare to get a situation like twenty twenty two where Jordan Poole plays well on a championship run, right, and obviously Jordan Pool is demonstrated that he can succeed in a winning concept, But young players are inconsistent, you know, Like, doesn't surprise me really all that much that one year After Jordan Pool plays well on his way to a championship, he struggles on his way to losing in the second round.

It's because he's a young basketball player. They struggle to replicate success and to avoid failures. They're young, and over time you get better at learning to avoid failures and learning to replicate your success. So it's better for players like him to be in low stress situations on bad

teams that have no expectations. And so he can go to the Wizards and he can run one thousand pick and rolls next year fifteen hundred pick and rolls, and he can really learn how to manipulate NBA defenses through trial and error, by making mistakes, by having awful games, And he can do that for a few years, and then the Wizards can find out at that point if

he's capable of being a foundational star. It's just too hard to find out on a Warriors team that rightfully would bench him when he was struggling because they had championship aspirations. Like most players are afforded the luxury of learning how to play basketball in a low stress situation before they play in high stress situations. Guys to get drafted by winning teams like that, they typically have a

much different path and Jordan Poole, credit to him. He's found a way to succeed with the Warriors for stretches, but this will be a nice little stretch for him where he can for a couple of years just learn how to play the game at a at a professional level with no stress. He has one truly elite skill, and that's his ability to beat people off the dribble. I always like to look at a foundational skill with

the player. If they're not great at anything, it's going to be harder for them to reach a really high ceiling. And with Jordan Poole, he's just so damned fast that as he puts on a little bit more muscle mass, works on his rim finishing, learns how to make reads at a higher level, improves his pull up jump shooting. That will all supplement his ability to beat people off the dribble and make him better. And then obviously, over the years he's just gonna have to learn how to,

little by little become a better defensive player. But I actually really like this move for the Wizards. More details came out on the Bradley Beal trade. It turns out they got four first round pick swaps out of the deal, so the asset return on that deal is a little better than it looked. I think they'll re up on Kyle Kuzma and you just run the team through Kuzman pool for a few years, and which one of those guys that are worth building around in the future. All Right, guys,

that's all I have for right now. I'll see you later tonight for Live Draft Dispecial. The volume