Joe Dumars' Remarks About Pelicans Offseason Lead to More Questions Than Answers

Coming off back-to-back sub-30-win seasons, the expectation was for the New Orleans Pelicans to completely overhaul their roster. Instead, the team largely remains intact heading into the 2026-27 NBA season.

The perceived lack of direction continues to puzzle both fans and onlookers hoping for necessary change, but instead getting what some could call uncertainty from the Pelicans’ brass.

President of Basketball Operations Joe Dumars recently went on record to discuss the team’s offseason, but his comments seem to raise more questions than answers about the team's future viability.

Joe Dumars Fails to Give Pelicans Fans Any Hope in Latest Remarks

"We were engaged in a lot of conversations with a lot of different teams," Dumars said, per Rod Walker of NOLA.com. "But at the end of the day, you’ve got to make a determination if this is the right deal or not. You don’t want to make a move for the sake of making a move. It has to be right for us."

He went on to add, "The lack of moves being made right now is not from a lack of effort or us deciding we didn’t want to do anything. We’ve engaged with a lot of teams this offseason. But there was just no big deal that I felt was going to make us better for us to pull the trigger on."

Dumars' choice of words, ‘right now,’ may be indicative of the team still actively pursuing a big move behind the scenes, but the team also seems content with running it back as presently constructed.

Bringing back almost entirely the same roster on a team that won 26 games last year seems like a recipe for disaster. New Orleans couldn’t hang on to the excuse that its best player, Zion Williamson, was hurt, as the two-time All-Star played 62 games last season, the second-most in his career.

New Orleans was unable to address two glaring weaknesses on their team: outside shooting and interior defense. The Pelicans ranked near the bottom of the league in both categories last year. To date, their biggest offseason move is hiring new head coach Jamahl Mosley to be the head man on the bench after firing former coach Willie Green after the first couple of weeks of the season.

Mosley brings a defensive-focused approach, with an aggressive style on defense and a demand for accountability on the court. That should, in theory, help a young team to be more disciplined at times, but that in itself doesn’t make up for the lack of size in the paint or the lack of quality shooting from the outside.

New Orleans has not proven it has the personnel to win consistently in this league. A splashy move could change that, but the team seems hesitant to make that move for fear of backlash or the possibility of failure.

Many of their players have been tied to trade rumors since the summer began, with names like Trey Murphy III, Herb Jones, Jordan Hawkins, Dejounte Murray and others speculated to have been in some form of discussion with other teams.

No one knows the seriousness of those talks, but Dumars confirming the team had plenty of conversations with rival teams indicates that various talks were had.

These talks ultimately led to nothing, which fans fear will be the case for the Pelicans this upcoming season if things stay status quo.

The problem is that Dumars' remarks don't clarify whether the Pelicans were trying to buy or sell. It's still unclear whether this team is trying to win right away or is fine with building slowly.

New Orleans isn't out of time to make a move before opening night, but running back a fundamentally flawed roster under a new head coach feels like a dangerous gambit. If Mosley can’t quickly maximize the talents of this roster right away and start winning, then the front office’s quiet summer may quickly force far harder choices before the trade deadline.

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