Monumental Basketball President Michael Winger was moved by how Jordan Poole broke out of a rough early slump during the 2023-24 season through hard work and ignoring the noise.
(via Washington Wizards):
Reporter: “We know that obviously Jordan’s season started off in very disappointing fashion, and then he was able to turn it on these last six weeks or so post All-Star break. What were the conversations like with him throughout the season and what insight can you give us into how he was able to eventually get out of that slump and finish the way he did?”
Winger: “Jordan is an incredibly introspective and kind person. I don’t know if you’ve had a lot of time to spend with him, but the Jordan that sort of generally gets written about and the Jordan that exists behind a pair of spectacles are two different people. He loves talking hoop, he loves it, and he’s a really smart kid. So he knew what he was going through early in the season, and he just kept telling us like, ‘I’m gonna put in the work. I’m gonna do the work. I’m gonna do the work. The work will pay off. The work will pay off.’ He was taking darts and bullets and everything else throughout the course of the season; he just ignored it. He ignored it better than I did, quite frankly. He just kept saying like, ‘I’m gonna work, I’m gonna work, and the work will pay off.’ And to your point, I’ll be damned, but he had a slump, a long slump. It was hard for him. It was hard for us to watch, not as objective observers, but as people who can just reach in and fix a problem for him. But he came through because he’s a worker, he’s a gamer, he’s a hooper, super high character basketball player. Sometimes guys will surprise you by the amount of work they put in and how it pays off, and he did that. It was moving to watch him sort of come out of what he went through early in the season.”
