The Pelicans' Lack of Moves Is VERY Puzzling...

Speaking of teams who have done absolutely nothing this offseason, very confusingly, the New Orleans Pelicans have stood stock still after finishing as one of the worst teams in the NBA last year.

Uh, they've had a decent end to the season once everybody got healthy, which I think is a lot of the reason why, uh, the decision makers, Joe Dumars and Troy Weaver are You know, kind of standing still, but the Pelicans have almost literally done nothing.

They retained DeAndre Jordan, they signed some guys to uh exhibit 9 and 10 contracts.

There are rumors that they wanna get in on the Benedict Maurin, uh, Restricted free agency, but at large, it seems they are entirely content to run it back.

This is something that has confused Blake and I quite a bit over the last month, and we've talked a lot about it in our Slack chats, but we are now going to bring it to you, the audience.

The Pelicans, they have done nothing.

What would we have done?

What would we do to fix the New Orleans Pelicans going forward?

Blake, you have the floor.

I think it it starts and stops with, you got to build around Jeremiah Fears and Derek Queen.

I mean, both had great rookie seasons.

I mean, the Zion of it all is the biggest question.

He, his contract is, is going down, he has 1 year that he'll make 42 million next season, and then non-guaranteed the year after that, so is this the time we see a Zion trade?

I don't think that New Orleans was ready to move on from him yet.

I mean, he had, when he was on the floor, he had a good season last year, I think he's still one of the more dominant players in this league, when he's able to stay on the floor.

And then this year, all of a sudden you have Jordan Poole, who's a $34 million expiring contract that will come off your books a year from now and give you that much room to build around your young players.

I, I'm confused about the trade, their plan with Trey Murphy.

He, his name has come up a ton in trade conversations, like with Detroit, like, is that a name that Detroit wants to uh send out a number of first round picks and some interesting young pieces for.

He's signed for 3 more seasons, and he's a great player, like he could very well be a part of this core for the foreseeable future and how it's going right now, it seems like Joe Dumars and Troy Weaver want to keep it that way, but I mean, there's no way that this team is, is competing in the West next year.

Maybe they surprise a little bit, maybe Fears and Queen make a jump and Zion's available, um.

But I don't think, like, realistically, they're going to make much of anything happen, so, Trey Murphy is their, their best trade asset right now.

I mean, you can make an argument for Herb Jones, who is on a little bit more of an affordable contract, but he's a little bit older, and it just seems like fears and Queen are untouchable.

So, for me, what I would have done is I would have traded Trey Murphy, even though I love the guy, I think he would be a great piece on really any team in the NBA, but I think you have to capitalize on that and get As many picks and as many young pieces that you can, that you could see being a part of this team.

Moving forward, the good news is they control their future in the draft.

They have swap rights, uh, first round swap rights with the Bucks next season, which is super interesting after what Milwaukee did.

Um, and that is top 4 protected, and if it both New Orleans and Milwaukee's picks land in the top 4, New Orleans gets both of them.

So, I think they're in a position to Just the rebuild is going to continue for certainly next season, probably the season after that.

I don't think Zion Williamson and likely not Trey Murphy will be on the team past it, um, so I'm just in the mindset of capitalize on these assets that you have right now, bring in as much as possible.

Kick the can down the road, even though this franchise has been doing that for a long time and just been in this nowheresville, but I think, and maybe they do so at the deadline, but I do think that you just need to bring in as much as you can for the valuable pieces that I know have a ton of value around around the NBA.

And I think part of their thinking, which is, you know, understandable, is the new lottery rules next year.

And if you totally bottom out and sell everybody for pieces, then you're putting yourself in a position where you finish in the bottom three, and you end up with a worse pick than if you kept one or two useful veterans and won 5 or 5 or 6 more games.

Obviously, with the Bucks pick, that complicates the planning a little bit.

Um, I think my problem with how they've approached this offseason.

is that they haven't really picked a direction .

I mean, when you look at the roster, they have multiple veteran ball handlers who expect to be a big part of the offense and Jordan Poole and Dejounte Murray, Dejounte Murray.

Who was great, and I think should probably be mentioned more in trade talks.

I can see why people want to see a little bit more after he recovered, came back from an Achilles injury, but Um, then you got a couple like, you have one-way wings like Herb Jones and Siddiq Bay who are not hugely useful.

And you have Zion, who, as you say, is still one of the most dangerous scorers in the game, but when you are talking about floor lifting superstars and things of that nature, he is not so much one of those.

He succeeds in a vacuum, he's a great scorer in the way, I mean, if, you know, he put together a stretch of games consistently.

The way that he forces the defense to react to every one of his moves towards the paint can benefit other people, but it's not as natural as a lot of these other teams.

And then you have fears and Queen, who have showed something as rookies for sure, and clearly the front office is super in on those guys, like, whatever else you might say about what's going on in New Orleans, they are 100% invested.

In their young guys, and yet, they haven't done anything in, in my view this offseason to accentuate them beyond banking on the idea that having as many good players as possible around them is useful to their development, which is, you know, not, not a crazy concept.

But when we're talking about optimizing your, you know, team building, particularly in the West where you are really fighting an uphill battle against those guys.

You need to move more opportunistically, and I think the Murphy trade situation is a clear example of them leaving something on the table where even if, you know, there are reports of 4 or 5 1st round picks being offered for this guy, and You know, you can't 100% believe all those, but like, if either they're even remotely true, that's something you need to think about and probably pull the trigger on if you're not, you know, if it's something you need to think about and probably pull the trigger on if you're planning for the 3 to 5-year plan.

Planning for next year, you don't trade him, of course, you don't trade him.

But planning for the next couple of years, that is , that is a risk-reward balance you have to make with Murphy.

It did feel like it was tipping more on a reward than risk for the Pelicans.

Keeping him is absolutely defensible decision, not doing anything else is not particularly defensible.

There is trade value for Herb Jones.

There is trade value for the expiring contract of Jordan Poole.

There is trade value for Dejounte Murray.

There is, there, there's a lot of different Of all the different paths they could have taken, they chose the one where they stood still.

And I think that is frustrating because we can see, it seems like there were a lot of opportunities to change things.

And you don't wanna change things for the sake of changing them, but there were tangible trades to be made that where it's like, you get this guy, this guy, heads out and you get assets, and you're not worse next year.

You're not better, but you're not worse.

So, My perception of how this offseason went in New Orleans, is they are operating like their floor is a 35 to 40 win team.

And I think it's not unreasonable to move forward with that kind of team in the effort of developing your young talent, avoiding the new lottery rules, and above all, refusing to accept the, you know, notion that the West is impossible to win, so there's no point in trying.

Nobody's suggesting they do that.

I think that's their ceiling is a 35 to 40 win team, and that's if everybody's healthy.

The rookie or the rookies take a sophomore leap, and everything kind of falls into place in the exact way they're imagining, which everybody knows doesn't really happen.

Yeah, and even, even if that's the belief the front office has, which, I, I mean, I'm with you, I don't agree with it, but I think there are some moves they could have made around the margins to at least accumulate some assets, like nothing huge.

Jordan Hawkins pretty much fell out of this rotation last year, and he has one year left on his rookie contract.

I'm sure there's a team out there that would Take a shot on him as a depth piece, like he was considered the best 3 point shooter in his draft class when he came into the league.

A lot of teams need 3 point shooting.

I don't think you could get anything significant for Jordan Hawkins, but you could probably get uh multiple 2nd round picks that you could use in other deals and something.

Yeah, and like, Eve Missy is, he, the front office clearly believes in him too, but that's another name you could consider.

I'm sure there's some teams that would be interested in him, but it seems like he was off the table as well, so.

Yeah, it seems like, I don't know, we obviously don't know what offers were on the table, or if the phone was just hung up every time a team asks about uh Trey Murphy or Eve Missy or whatever it is.

I, I will give the front office some credit though, because they took a lot of flak for the uh trade for Derrick Queen last year, giving up their unprotected first round pick in 2026, that put the Pelicans in a position where they had no reason to lose this year, they weren't going to be.

In the lottery, their pick ends up at 8 and goes to Atlanta.

Atlanta uses that to take Kingston Flemings, who I like, I did like through the draft process as a prospect, but It, I would rather have Jeremiah Pears and Derek Queen right now than Kingston Flemings and some of the players that went after him, so I think New Orleans at least feels pretty good about about that move at least, but otherwise, I mean, you gotta put a A competent roster around your two young core members and hopefully get some lottery luck with these new lottery rules to put Another star, maybe two stars around them, and part with some of your bigger contracts, but at least the trade for Queen last year is, is looking a lot more like it makes some sense than it did a year ago when Joe Dumars gave up that unprotected first.

Yeah, we'll 100% give them the credit where it's due there.

I think in a very interesting twist of events, the Pacers trade for Zubach where they gave up their first round pick this year actually turned out much worse for them than what the Pelicans did with Queen, which is very funny when you think about how dramatically different the views of those transactions were when they came down.

The Pacers, you know, everyone thought it was a pretty decent, albeit very risky bet.

Zubach is a good player, good center.

And the Pelicans just got destroyed for the Queen trade.

Everybody teed off on them, and it went on for an entire like 12 months.

So, I hope they're feeling good about that because it did work out really well.

I totally agree with you on the kind of where that, where that came out.

Obviously, from a process versus results standpoint, maybe not the best, but at the end of the day, results are all that matter in the NBA and uh didn't work out too, too bad.

I'm excited to see what Queen does next year, if anything, even with this kind of strange roster.