CJ McCollum trade grades: Pelicans get ‘C-‘ for Jordan Poole addition, Wizards look smart for clearing books

The New Orleans Pelicans are trading CJ McCollum, Kelly Olynyk and a future second-round pick to the Washington Wizards for Jordan Poole, Saddiq Bey and the No. 40 overall pick in the second round of the NBA Draft on Thursday, according to ESPN.

The deal marks the second trade made this offseason by new Pelicans executive Joe Dumars, following their surprise first-round swap with the Indiana Pacers during the NBA Finals. While that deal netted them the No. 23 overall pick in this year’s draft, this trade adds two younger players that could potentially help this season. 

While Jordan Poole hasn’t lived up to the lofty expectations placed on him with the Golden State Warriors, he had a solid season for Washington last year averaging over 20 points per game on reasonably efficient shooting. Bey missed last season while recovering from a torn ACL, but has been a starting-caliber forward in the past.

For the Wizards, meanwhile, this is mostly a financial transaction. While they take on roughly $5 million in salary for the 2025-26 season, both McCollum and Olynyk are on expiring deals. Poole and Bey each have two years left on their contracts, so now, the Wizards are set up to have significant cap space in the summer of 2026, in which far more useful veterans are expected to be available than are in 2025.

Meanwhile, McCollum, the president of the NBPA, is another solid veteran to add to the Washington locker room. The Wizards also added Marcus Smart and Khris Middleton at the trade deadline, giving them several proven winners to help mentor their extremely young core. The Wizards are still pretty early into their rebuild, so having veterans like that around should prove quite useful for their promising young talent. With all of that in mind, let’s grade the trade.

Washington Wizards: B+

When the Wizards acquired Poole two summers ago, he was a pretty high-upside prospect. He looked like a future star in 2022, when the Warriors won the championship. And then Draymond Green punched him, things went sideways, and the Warriors desperately needed to save some money. He was only 24 when he was traded, so it was a reasonable swing on a promising talent. He’s still a good player, but he hasn’t blossomed in a higher-usage role to the extent they would have hoped. Now, with youngsters like Bilal Coulibaly, Bub Carrington, Kyshawn George, AJ Johnson and possibly Wednesday’s No. 6 overall pick needing more touches on the ball, the Wizards have seemingly decided to pull the plug on the Poole experiment.

In doing so, they’ve set themselves up quite nicely for the future. McCollum is going to be a good influence on those young players, but more importantly, he cleans up Washington’s books. The Wizards are now primed for roughly $100 million in 2026 cap space. The Wizards aren’t going to be a superstar destination in the middle of a rebuild, but that space has a lot of value. They can rent it out to teams in a scary apron position or simply sign useful veterans who fit a bit more cleanly onto their timeline.

All in all, it’s a good bit of business for Washington. The Wizards saved long-term money while empowering their most important young players in the process. It’s not an especially flashy trade, but it’s one that should pay dividends for them down the line.

New Orleans Pelicans: C-

There were seemingly two short-term motivations for New Orleans here. The first was financial. The Pelicans were pressing up against the luxury tax before this trade. Poole and Bey will make roughly $5 million less this season than McCollum and Olynyk, so that’s useful wiggle room for the Pelicans to potentially dip into their mid-level exception. They’d have to shed a bit more money to use all of it, but now they can potentially add someone of note in free agency or at least round out the roster a bit.

The other motivation here is age. McCollum is seven years older than Poole. Olynyk is eight years older than Bey. Now, there is not a single Pelican in his 30s. As far as timelines go, their roster is fully aligned. Every core player is in his mid-to-late 20s.

But alignment doesn’t mean much if the team doesn’t make sense. The only healthy player from last year’s team that is still on the roster who averaged five or more assists last season was Zion Williamson. This trade would seemingly lean further into him as the point forward for New Orleans, but he still can’t really be trusted to stay healthy. Poole is mostly a gunner offensively. The Pelicans have plenty of those. Dejounte Murray injects a dose of playmaking when he comes back, but who knows how he’ll look after his Achilles tear. Murray’s defensive decline raises further questions, as Poole is a bad defender as well. 

Now, these problems existed before this trade, but having cap flexibility gave them more room to actually address them in the near future. Right now, the Pelicans are slated to pay roughly $68 million to Poole and Murray in the 2026-27 season. As his Golden State tenure showed, Poole is probably a reserve on a good team. Murray might be diminished post-injury. That’s a lot of money to spend on a backcourt that may not have an obvious, starting-caliber floor general.

There still doesn’t seem to be a clear plan in New Orleans. What exactly is Dumars trying to accomplish with this roster? Unless Poole solves a problem aren’t immediately identifying here, having his contract on the books for the 2026-27 season is going to make it harder for the Pelicans to actually address the issues that are still at hand here.