Jordan Poole is still striving for game-to-game consistency, but played some of his best basketball of the season over the last month with Steph Curry sidelined by a left leg injury. Now that the reigning Finals MVP has returned, though, Steve Kerr and the Golden State Warriors made a lineup change that could disrupt Poole's recent progress.

With Curry back in the lineup on Sunday against the Los Angeles Lakers, Poole will come off the bench for just the second time in Golden State's last 22 games. The last time he was off the floor for tipoff came on February 4th against the Dallas Mavericks, when Curry suffered his injury.

Opening alongside Curry for Sunday's matinee are Klay Thompson, Draymond Green, Kevon Looney and Donte DiVincenzo, the latter of whom is starting for Andrew Wiggins, still out due to a personal matter.

It was just mid-January when Kerr surprised by making Poole a full-time member of the starting lineup, slotting him in for Looney while further embracing small-ball. That changed proved fleeting, though, with Golden State going back to its traditional starting five merely two weeks later.

“We got a good look at the smaller lineup—I think it was nine games, if I’m not mistaken. And I just came to the conclusion that our best bet was to start with the bigger lineup,” Kerr said after that February 4th win over Dallas. “We know that five-man unit is the No. 1 or No. 2 lineup in the NBA, and that was with a big sample size. So we like that unit, and we feel like our bench is playing better now. We’ve got more continuity there.”

In 23 games off the bench this season, Poole is averaging 14.7 points and 4.5 assists with a below-average true shooting percentage of 55.0. He's been more productive and efficient as a starter, averaging 24.5 points and 4.7 assists on 57.3% true shooting across 41 games.

The multiple weeks-long absences of Curry and Wiggins skew those numbers, though. Poole's usage as a starter has been drastically affected by whether he's sharing the backcourt with Curry.

It's safe to say he remains most comfortable starting, basically, but don't look too far into those statistical discrepancies as evidence Poole—coming off an influential one-on-one chat with Kerr early last week—won't continue playing well now that he's back to coming off the pine.