The Golden State Warriors will be one of the best teams in the NBA next season and as such, several members of the roster are among the favorites to take home some of the league’s most prized hardware.
An ESPN panel was convened on Thursday, August 11, and asked to vote on who would win a variety of awards from league MVP to Coach of the Year. The categories were littered with names of Warriors, though one Dubs’ guard was a runaway favorite on one particular list.
Experts voted breakout star Jordan Poole to win 2022-23 Sixth Man of the Year in a runaway. Each voter was asked to rank their top three choices, assigning them values of five points, three points and one point, respectively.
Poole garnered a total of 77 points, including 77.8% of the first-place votes. Malcolm Brogdon of the Boston Celtics came in second with a total of 22 points and 16.7% of first-place votes. The 55-point gap was the largest between a first- and second-place finisher in any category voted on by the panel.
Dubs forward Draymond Green came in fifth in the voting for Defensive Player of the Year, while Steph Curry landed in fourth on the list for Most Valuable Player.
Curry is under contract for the next four years and Green is expected to reach a deal with the team on some type of extension within the next 12 months, as both players enter the twilight stages of their primes. The 23-year-old Poole, however, who is still very much on his way up is the most likely of the Dubs’ core six players to end up in another team’s uniform in 2023-24.
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Jordan Poole Will be Coveted if Warriors Let Him Reach Free Agency
GettyGolden State Warriors guard Jordan Poole goes to the hoop during a second-round playoff bout with the Memphis Grizzlies.
Poole will play next season in a contract year, after which he will hit restricted free agency if the Dubs don’t extend him by the October deadline.
Sean Deveney of Heavy.com spoke with an Eastern Conference executive who said at least one team will be eager to jump on an offer sheet for Poole next summer.
“I’d watch out for the [Orlando] Magic to be ready to make an offer if he’s restricted, knowing there’s a good chance Golden State is not going to match,” the executive told Deveney last week.
Poole Predicted Most Likely Warriors Player to Depart Next Offseason
GettyJordan Poole reacts to a play in a game against the Los Angeles Clippers.
Deveney also posited that Golden State would be most inclined to part with Poole over Green and Klay Thompson, both of whom are mainstays of the Dubs’ now eight-year dynasty.
It’s difficult to imagine Golden State proceeding through the remaining productive years of Steph Curry’s career without Klay Thompson and Draymond Green on board, after all, and the postseason performance logged by Andrew Wiggins this spring showed that the team really can’t move n from him, either.
Poole, though, is a guy the Warriors can live without, especially as players like Jonathan Kuminga and Moses Moody develop. And with weighty luxury-tax bills looming as the deadline for an extension for Poole nears (October 18), the hard choice the team must make on whom to keep appears a bit easier — Poole, whose flashes of brilliance are tempered by inconsistency and defensive flaws, is not likely to stick with the Warriors if he wants the contract in the $25 million per year range he seems to warrant.
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Warriors’ Star Predicted to Depart Golden State by Next Offseason