Post game: Poole goes off, but Warriors fall just short of taking down the Suns

A career night for Poole, and an outstanding game, but turnovers and some bad shots doom Golden State

Jordan Poole was nearly unstoppable: he tied his career-best with 38 points, as well as 9 rebounds, and 7 assists — but unfortunately the Golden State Warriors couldn’t quite get past a strong Phoenix Suns team tonight. Still, a pretty fun game, all told, and one that may have delivered on some of the increasingly noisy calls for this team to be good without Stephen Curry.

Jordan Poole had his best game as a professional basketball player. The stat line was impressive enough alone, but from an eyeballs standpoint Poole just felt like the best player on the court for most of the game tonight.

StatMuse @statmuse

Games with 30+ points, 7+ rebounds, 7+ assists, 7+ threes in Warriors history: Steph Steph Steph Steph Steph Steph Steph Steph Steph Poole tonight

The Warriors were shooting themselves in the foot all night (seriously, from the opening tip), and it’s a small miracle that the game was even in reach. Here’s a stat for you: at halftime, the Warriors held Phoenix to just 38% shooting as a team, but as a result of all the turnovers, the Suns had taken 13 more shots than Golden State heading into the half.

Klay Thompson had a rough one too. 13 points on 5/21 shooting (and 1 of 10 from deep), plus a kick-in-the-gut foul in the closing minutes of the game on Devin Booker (off-ball even) that gave the Suns free throws because they were in the bonus. Lots of those little details were all over the place. Missed defensive rotations, sloppy turnovers, and some strategic weirdness — including an end of the game heave from Poole that came about 4 seconds too early.

But all told? One hell of a game.

Draymond Green seemed to flip a switch back on tonight. Funny, because the last edge of the good version of this team was really seen against this same Phoenix Suns team back on Christmas Day — before Green got hurt.

Joe Viray @JoeVirayNBA

Feels like forever since we've seen Draymond do his thing in the short roll. Poole draws two, makes the nifty pocket pass to Draymond, triggers the 4-on-3. GP2 cuts baseline, Draymond threads the pass to him for the layup. Vintage short-roll Draymond.

Give the Warriors Stephen Curry and run it back over the course of a seven game series and I really like our odds. I hope there’s some optimism from this loss. I know the Warriors are supposedly beyond lowly “moral” victories, but a lot went right for Golden State tonight. Even with all the errors, this game was one YOLO three away from being an epic statement win.

And maaaaaaan, Jordan Poole looked real nice out there.

Dubs💍 @dubsforever7

Poole is averaging 27/5/5 on 44-41-95 splits without Steph this season, this guy is literally putting up all nba caliber numbers without Steph.

Anyways, tip your cup (or ice cream spoon) for the Warriors tonight. Frustrating and heartening don’t often go together, but for such a mixed season, I’m just going to embrace the moment where I’m at. And be happy about the one that got away.