There’s a big difference between being on a championship-level NBA team and being on one that consistently ends the season with the best lottery odds. Jordan Poole has seen both sides of the coin, having been a member of the 2022 Golden State Warriors title-winning team and a starter, and in some ways the face of, the Washington Wizards the last two years.
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Now Poole is in New Orleans after being traded in June, and he’s hoping that his wide breadth of experience will help the Pelicans improve upon a disastrous 2024-25 season and get back to the playoffs.
Poole and the Pelicans are in Australia to take on Melbourne United and South East Melbourne of the NBL in a couple of exhibition games. This is the first time an NBA team has traveled to play Down Under, and with the games looming Friday and Saturday, Poole sat down with Australia’s CODE Sports to talk about what he’s bringing to the table for his new team.
“In both situations you do a lot of learning,” he said. “A lot was winning, a lot was trying to find a way to bring value to basketball. And then going to D.C. was a completely different scenario, a little bit more challenging,” he added.
“Being able to learn things I wouldn’t learn in GSW has prepared me for this… Now I am able to apply that to a team that is very capable of making a run… It’ll be cool to put the pieces together and try to lead this team to the playoffs”
— Jordan Poole on his NBA journey pic.twitter.com/RuCJDPEzAB
— Pelicans Film Room (@PelsFilmRoom) October 2, 2025
Poole maintains that he got to learn a lot, like how to communicate with younger members of the squad and understand the process of going through the ups and downs of rebuilding a team and an organization.
He sees the Pelicans as being somewhere between his old Warriors and Wizards teams, but he believes he can use what he’s learned at both previous stops to help his new team reach their potential. “It’ll be really cool to put all the pieces together and try to lead this team to the playoffs,” he said.
The Pelicans had finished above .500 two years in a row before freefalling to a 21-61 record last year. Injuries were mostly to blame for their 28-win dropoff, as most of the team’s best players spent significant time on the shelf.
Dejounte Murray missed time early in the season with a broken hand and then ruptured his Achilles just over two weeks before the All-Star Game. Zion Williamson again couldn’t stay healthy, as a hamstring strain and then a back injury limited him to just 30 games. Other injuries to Trey Murphy III, Herb Jones and CJ McCollum didn’t help, either.
Poole isn’t the only new face on the team. Saddiq Bey came with him from Washington, and the Pelicans used their two first-round picks on exciting players with big upside: Jeremiah Fears of Oklahoma and Derik Queen of Maryland.
Whether that will be enough to hang in the West remains to be seen, but hopes in the Big Easy are definitely higher than they were by the end of last season. Zion slimmed down quite a bit this summer, and Murray is expected back midway through the year. If Poole can be an additive piece and the rookies pop, the Pelicans could be a lot of fun.
