Wizards on a skid as Jordan Poole makes return to Golden State

On a quest to make his first All-Star team, Jordan Poole prepares to face his former team when the Washington Wizards visit the Golden State Warriors on Saturday night in San Francisco.

The club's first-round pick in 2019, Poole played his first four seasons for Golden State, averaging a full-season career-best 20.4 points in his final year for the Warriors in 2022-23.

Along the way, he had a pair of 30-point games and 19 double-figure scoring efforts in Golden State's run to the 2022 championship.

But after a highly publicized run-in with teammate Draymond Green during training camp the following October, Poole fell out of favor in San Francisco and was eventually dealt to the Wizards in July 2023 as part of a package for Chris Paul.

Poole has faced the Warriors three times since then, once in San Francisco, where he had 25 points on 7-for-21 shooting in a 129-118 loss in December 2023.

He's gone head-to-head with former backcourt partner Stephen Curry in all three matchups with the Warriors. Curry has gotten the better of the scoring by an average of 24.0 points to 20.3 points, while Golden State has won all three games.

This time around, both Poole, who is averaging a career-high 21.4 points, and the Wizards arrived in town in a bit of a slump. Washington has lost eight in a row, the last three of which while Poole was averaging just 17.0 points and shooting just 17-for-47 overall (36.2 percent) and 7-for-27 on 3-pointers (25.9 percent).

As they prepare to greet -- not necessarily politely -- Poole for the second time since his trade, Warriors fans will get their first opportunity to see Wizards rookie Alex Sarr, the No. 2 overall pick in last year's draft.

The 19-year-old has scored in double figures in 16 of his last 17 games, but he's been proudest of what he's done at the other end of the court, where he's had two blocks in each of Washington's last three games despite opponents attempting to draw him out to the perimeter.

"I didn't feel too out of my comfort zone," he said of his play away from the basket. "It's just being able to roam around, covering ground and helping anywhere on the court."

The Warriors could try a similar tactic with Green, who has been shooting more than twice as many 3-pointers this season (3.8 per game) as he was when Poole was his teammate two years ago (1.8 per game).

The mere mention of Poole brings back bad memories for Green.

"One of my biggest failures as a vet was the incident with Jordan Poole," he now admits. "It took me to go through that failure with him, who was someone who came in and chose his locker to be next to me because he wanted to learn from me, and I (messed) it all up. I haven't felt that miserably (about) most things in my life. It taught me a ton."

Green sat out the last three games on a Warriors trip that ended with a win at Minnesota on Wednesday. With two days off at home to recuperate, he's expected to return from an illness to face the Wizards, against whom he had one of his best games of the season in November.

Green contributed 18 points, eight rebounds and five assists to a 125-112 win at Washington. Curry and Poole both scored 24 points in the game, while Sarr had a 10-point, 11-rebound double-double that also featured three blocks.

--Field Level Media