Rebuild Retrospective: New Orleans Pelicans

I think this is finally working

Mar 27, 2024

Determining whether you’re in paradise or purgatory should be easy. In paradise, existence is serene, peaceful, tranquil. Picture the New Orleans Pelicans, who have a transcendent talent surrounded by accomplished veterans and young upstarts who play their roles to perfection.

Purgatory, meanwhile, is shapeless. No direction, no tranquility, just a big white, echo-y void where you eat baloney and cheese sandwiches for every meal. Picture the New Orleans Pelicans, who have two total playoff victories in the past four years, and have won between 30 and 42 games in each of those seasons… wait, what the fuck?

Ok, so deciphering between the two isn’t so simple. Because the Pels do roster a number one overall pick who’s made two All-Star teams in five seasons. They have a hyper-talented wing scorer whose game keeps growing as his career progresses. They have one of the most consistent guard bucket-getters in the league over the past decade. They have one of the best wing defenders in the NBA. They have a competent young coach. They play in one of the best cities in the United States.

But they’re also never that good, and they still feel years away from being a real threat to bring a Larry O’Brien to the Bayou.

How the Pelicans get to this point— the point of (maybe) no return — is just as strange as an NBA team being named the fucking Pelicans. Also, if 2023-24 doesn’t end up being the breakthrough year, then purgatory will start looking like New Orleans’ permanent home. That’s too much baloney.

I. Euphoria

Sometimes it’s tough to decide where to start the story of a team’s rebuild.

Not this time.

The story of New Orleans' rebuild starts on May 14, 2019. Draft lottery night. Not a run-of-the-mill draft lottery, either; the most publicly anticipated draft lottery in a long time, because the prize was, in short, a 6’7 dancing bear with a 45-inch vertical leap whose high school mixtape remains the funniest video on YouTube. Zion Williamson was viewed as a surefire superstar, an overnight franchise-changer, someone that front offices try to build around from day one, the kind of player that you create in a video game, so physically imposing that he’s hard to believe if you never watched him play.

Fans around the country understandably became woozy imagining the instant impact Williamson would have on their favorite team— but with new NBA lottery rules installed to prevent egregious tanking around the league, no team had over a 14% chance of landing the coveted top pick.

New Orleans specifically had just a six percent chance of winning the right to Zion— at the same time, during the lead up to the lottery, New Orleans’ current star, Anthony Davis, was seeking a trade from the Pels to the Los Angeles Lakers.

Davis was the grand prize of the previous attempted rebuild in New Orleans, but the team won just one playoff series over seven seasons with Davis on the roster. By 2019, it was probably time to part ways with Davis… he made that decision pretty easy, too.

So, on May 14th, when New Orleans defied the odds for the second time in seven years and earned the right to draft Zion Williamson… things changed in a hurry. A new superstar was coming to NOLA while the old one was likely going West.

The best way to articulate how big of a deal getting Zion was is by showing you the reaction of fans who didn’t win the number one pick. Look at the state of ruin these grown adults are left in after their teams don’t win the draft lottery.

I get it, guys.

II. Some New Guys

It took a few months, but Anthony Davis was eventually traded to the Los Angeles Lakers on June 16, 2019 for a metric boatload of picks and players— most notably young wing Brandon Ingram and the fourth overall pick in the rapidly approaching 2019 draft.

Ingram was entering his fourth year in the NBA; coming out of college, he was (very unfairly) compared to Kevin Durant, and while he (very obviously) didn’t live up to that comparison, he headed to NOLA as a good player with clear potential to blossom into a great player. All in all, the trade package that New Orleans received from the Lakers was legit. That, plus Zion coming to town in a few weeks, made the Pels future outlook pretty bright.

Draft day rolled around a few weeks later, and Zion was officially crowned as the new king of New Orleans:

Fan bases are prone to histrionics when their team acquires a potential superstar, but Pelicans fans weren’t alone in believing their young, thrilling team was on a very quick ride to contention— the whole league thought that.

III. Promise

There was buzz around the 2019-20 Pelicans. The roster had a nice mix of youngsters — Williamson and Ingram of course, but also Josh Hart and Lonzo Ball, the two other players acquired in the trade with LA — and veterans like Jrue Holiday and JJ Redick. There wasn’t a ton of depth so no one expected a deep playoff run, but there was reason to be excited.

The team, presumably, would be fine in Zion’s first season— if he played like the generational prospect he was perceived to be, and Brandon Ingram could make a leap in a new role— in a place where he wasn’t expected to be Kevin Durant— then season one of the rebuild would be considered a success.

Okay, good start. Zion ended up playing just 24 games in his rookie season but he was so good in those 24 games that he still finished third in Rookie of the Year voting, with Ja Morant taking home the award.

TBP TRIVIA TIME

The answer is at the end of the article and yes it’s the dumbest possible answer. Back to the story!

So, Zion was great; that’s an important step in this rebuild. A knee injury causing him to miss 44 games his rookie season is something to keep an eye on, but the on-court production was nothing short of phenomenal. Let’s check in on Ingram.

Hey, that’s good too! Really good! Ingram upped his scoring average to a career-best 23.8 points per game, made his first All-Star team and earned Most Improved Player, beating out Bam Adebayo, Luka Doncic, and Jayson Tatum— a much less funny list than the ROY list from that year.

New Orleans finished the COVID season 30-42— but say it with me: records are irrelevant in year one of rebuilds.

IV: Waiting for the Leap

The signs from year one of the Pels rebuild all indicated that this is going to work. A mediocre record was nothing to worry about; the two young stars both lived up to expectations and would undoubtedly continue to grow in year two of the rebuild.

The sideline was going to look a bit different in year two of Zion and BI in NOLA, though; Alvin Gentry was out as head coach, and in came Stan Van Gundy, whose most recent stop in Detroit was underwhelming, but looking at that franchise now, I kind of think SVG should get an award for getting the Pistons to the playoffs at all, even if they did get swept in the first round. He’s also pretty good on TNT now. I digress.

Also, okay, Brandon Ingram didn’t really grow at all from 2019-20 to 2020-21— his stats were virtually the same across the board— but that’s okay! At just 23, posting similar stats to an All-Star season is totally fine. If anything, Pels fans should take solace in knowing his great campaign the year prior wasn’t a fluke. 23.8 points, 4.9 assists, 38.1% from 3PT. That’s still really good production on a team that doesn’t have much shooting surrounding Ingram and Williamson.

Oh right, Williamson! He did get better; All-Star better, in fact. 27 points, 7.2 rebounds, 3.7 assists, 61.1% from the field. Almost unheard of efficiency for a 20 year-old. His All-Star selection was obvious; Zion was here.

Ingram and Williamson both appeared to still be on a path toward stardom (if they weren’t already there) and New Orleans finished the 2020-21 season with a record of… 31-41? Huh? That’s almost identical to the previous year. The team didn’t get better at all? What happened here?

Please stand by…

Okay, I figured it out.

The Pelicans didn’t really add anyone else to the team, so outside of Williamson and Ingram, the roster was sort of a mishmash of random veterans.

Whatever, it’s fine. You don’t want to rush into anything, and your franchise cornerstones are in place. But New Orleans has to see results next year in 2021-22, right? Three seasons of bad basketball is not how you want to start your rebuild, no matter how impressive your young players are.

V: Oh Shit, Oh Fuck

September, 2021:

That’s not good. But let’s not panic yet, okay? Of course Zion was always going to deal with some foot and knee injuries; players of his size and athleticism don’t… really… exist.

December, 2021:

This is taking a lot longer than expected. Panic meter is starting to rise, I won’t lie. But being cautious is always the right approach.

February, 2022:

Panic.

Okay, so Zion missed the entire 2021-22 season. Simultaneously, Brandon Ingram’s production dropped significantly and Stan Van Gundy was fired after the 2020-21 season, leading the Pels to hire rookie coach Willie Green who might be in over his head.

Anything else?

That’s pretty good, actually. Everybody take a breath. Maybe everything will work out.

VI: Playoffs?

Playoffs! Somehow, miraculously, with seemingly everything going wrong, the New Orleans Pelicans made the 2021-22 playoffs, taking advantage of the play-in tournament where they beat the Spurs then the Clippers and sneaking into the postseason with a record of 36-46. That’s still pretty bad, but whatever— playoffs!

New Orleans was ousted in the first round by defending Western Conference champions Phoenix 4-2, but not before rookie guard— and instant fan favorite— Jose Alvarado annoyed the hell out of Chris Paul a few times.

Just appearing in the postseason can change the outlook of a team’s future; yes, the Pelicans finished the 2021-22 season with a record well under .500 again. Yes, their superstar forward missed the whole season with a foot injury that, even after the season, was still without a timetable for recovery.

But the Pels did fight against a powerhouse Suns team, they did acquire CJ McCollum who played great in his first (half) season as a Pelican, and a healthy Zion could make this team a real threat in 2022-23.

VII: For Real Now, Right?

Opening day, 2022. Zion’s back and he looks damn good. The burst isn’t what it used to be but he’s still essentially unstoppable in the lane. In year four, it looks like the Pelicans are going to have a real, good team around Zion. Second year wing Trey Murphy III and Herb Jones, the team’s young defensive ace, were slated for breakout seasons, and the Zion, BI, CJ trio were healthy and hoping for continuity—finally.

Okay, the Pels did it! They’re finally good! Zion’s finally healthy

Let’s just hop to the end of the regular season and…

Oh, what the fuck??? What happened here?

Well, the same thing as before, kind of. Zion missed over 50 games with various injuries, Ingram missed about half the season, Herb Jones missed 16 games, and a hot start to the season turned frigid when the Pels big guns were sidelined with injuries. No playoffs— again.

So after four years of Zion and BI, the Pelicans won 30, 31, 36, and 42 games. That’s not going to cut it— that’s barely a rebuild. At this pace, the Pelicans are on track to be an elite NBA team in about 2031.

Maybe the structure of this team just doesn’t make sense. Maybe it’s time to shake things up.

VIII: Just When I’m Finally Out…

… the Pelicans become one of the best teams in the NBA, apparently.

Hey, we’re finally in present day, and all the negativity I felt towards the Pelicans after 2022-23 has been replaced with pure excitement and a level of belief in this team that I have absolutely never felt in the Zion era.

This season, New Orleans is 44-27, has the fourth-ranked net rating in all of basketball, the fifth-best record in the West (and are rapidly gaining on the Clippers for fourth) and Zion Williamson is playing the best basketball of his career. He’s doing the whole “inhuman dunks” thing again. I missed that, to be honest. It’s fun.

They also set up a website to promote Herb Jones for first team All-Defense which I kind of love, honestly. Things are going well.

Did the Pelicans get lucky, or did they just rebuild a team how teams—that don’t have the ability to simply trade for a superstar— should rebuild? I lean the latter. The build was slow and frustrating— often appearing to be completely stagnant— but the patience shown by this franchise is admirable, and probably a more realistic blueprint for team building than the methods other franchises attempt. New Orleans hit on draft picks, believed in its core players, and stuck with the plan.

Maybe this finally is paradise. The Pelicans have yet to win anything significant, but being a fan of this team must be pretty damn fun right now. At the very least, the franchise has escaped purgatory. Years from now, if the Pelicans become a mainstay in NBA Finals contention, we’ll all likely forget that the future looked a bit bleak during the first four years of Zion’s tenure in the Big Easy.

I don’t know how far the Pelicans go in this year’s playoffs—though the more I watch, the more confident I become that they will win at least one series. The Pelicans have a matchup nightmare in Zion, a couple of scorers they can turn to in the clutch, and numerous defensive pests who love to take on a challenge. That’s a winning formula. But regardless of how deep their postseason run is, though, this roster has proven to me that it can work, that the formula is there for high-level success. A few tweaks might need to be made in order to fully maximize the strengths of each player, but the Pelicans are— after a lot of false starts— finally running the race with the rest of the elite NBA teams.

Trivia answer: KENDRICK NUNN. SERIOUSLY. Kendrick Nunn came in second place behind Ja Morant for Rookie of the Year. We really did all lose our minds during the pandemic.

Thanks for reading Rebuild Retrospective! This is the third installment in the series. You can read part one, on the Oklahoma City Thunder, right here: