The New Orleans Pelicans are 0-6. Once it became clear injuries had wrecked the Pels' hopes of getting out to a quick start in the West, survival became the objective. Alas, New Orleans is not surviving. Two early losses to the unstoppable Warriors weren't surprises; giving up games against the Magic, Mavericks and Blazers are less forgivable.
Derick E. Hingle-USA TODAY Sports
The Pelicans know very well how difficult it is to make the playoffs in the West: They only did so on a prayer over the Thunder last season. While the bottom of the West playoff bracket is expected to be a little less impenetrable than usual this season due to roster edits in Portland and Dallas, you still expect 45 wins as a minimum qualification. Opening the season with six straight losses means New Orleans needs to go 45-31 the rest of the way to hit that mark. That’s .600 ball. That’s a lot to ask any sub-elite team in the West, especially one in the Pelicans’ state of disrepair.
The team is shorthanded, and will remain that way for perhaps another month. Tyreke Evans is weeks away from a return. Omer Asik has played all of 10 minutes this season. Norris Cole has yet to suit up, nor has Quincy Pondexter, who was so vital to the team last season. Kendrick Perkins is injured! Even the insurance policies can't stay healthy in New Orleans right now.
The remaining Pels feel like ticking time bombs, too. Eric Gordon hasn't played 70 games since his rookie year seven seasons ago. Anthony Davis has yet to play 70 in a season, and he's already a bit hobbled. Ryan Anderson has played more than 66 games only once in his seven-year career. Jrue Holiday is playing well more than his announced minutes limit suggested he would (23 per game vs. the 15 we expected), though he's also sat out twice.
And the schedule gets no easier. Only two of the Pelicans’ next seven opponents are under .500. Eight of their next 13 games are on the road, and they don’t play an East team at home until Cleveland visits in December.
No team has started so much as 0-4 and made the playoffs in the West since the 2006-07 Mavericks, who ended up winning a league-best 67 games and losing to the We Believe! Warriors in the first round. After starting that season with four straight losses, Dallas ran up a 12-game winning streak. Later that season, they had winning streaks of 13 and 17 games, and never lost more than two in a row after that early stumble. Something tells me that Pelicans are less capable of pulling off something like that.
The Pelicans are already three games out of the No. 8 seed two weeks into the season. This is not a good start, but it’s not too early to take a hard look at what they’ve built, and where they may go from here.
* * *
Just as problematic is the outlook for improvement outside of health. The Pelicans have remarkably few tradeable assets. Davis is the only Pelican on his rookie deal. Cole is on a qualifying offer and can veto any trade. Evans, Holiday, Gordon, Anderson and Pondexter are all relatively young, but they come with baggage of varying sorts.
Holiday’s health is a messy outlook that’s only gotten cloudier in New Orleans. Anderson and Gordon are free agents in July, which turns them into less valuable rentals on the trade market. Evans’ contract expires in 2017, and he’s not really a bargain at $11 million. Asik just signed a $60 million deal that isn’t yet panning out.
The only tradeable chips the Pelicans have are their draft picks. That's right, all draft debts (in the first round, at least) have been paid. New Orleans gave up picks to get Holiday (Nerlens Noel and Dario Saric) and Asik (Sam Dekker). The Pelicans do not owe any future first-rounders. That means that if they end up in the lottery again, they'll keep their pick. More likely, based on Dell Demps' history and the Pelicans' mandate to get back to the playoffs, it means that New Orleans can dangle picks in the trade market.
The 2016 NBA Draft is expected to be chock full of blue chippers and given New Orleans’ poor start, there’s some added value in their pick. One presumes the Pelicans would require some protections so they don’t end up giving away Ben Simmons, but even a low-lottery choice is a nice prize.
New Orleans can also dangle future picks, albeit in accordance with the Stepien Rule (packaging their 2016 and 2018 picks is okay; packaging the 2016 and 2017 picks is not). Tag picks onto one of those young vets with an expiring deal and you might pick up a strong veteran who can help now and for the next couple of years. (New Orleans could be a sneaky Carmelo Anthony destination, but that's another discussion entirely.)
That New Orleans finally has its own picks provides another sort of asset: The feeling of hope when all is lost. If the Pelicans do not recover and do not trade their pick, or if they trade it with protections and stay real bad, they’ll land another prized prospect. Davis can’t leave anytime soon thanks to the mammoth extension he signed in the offseason. There’s time to develop a true co-star for him, if it comes down to that.
* * *
So few teams in the NBA practice patience, especially when things really go sideways. Fans and franchisees get itchy, and there’s often a mental inclination to scat away the players who are currently frustrating everyone just for the sake of change. Perhaps the Pelicans’ relative lack of options for breaking up the team’s core is a blessing. Lacking other good options, New Orleans brass has little choice but to play it out.
The coach, Alvin Gentry, is brand new, and his offense is very different from what Monty Williams ran. (It should be noted that the Pels under Williams had a real good offense and a mediocre defense. Through six games, Gentry's beleaguered Pelicans have a mediocre offense and hideous defense. Playing the Warriors twice will do that to you.)
Patience is often rewarded in the NBA. Consider the Grizzlies, who suffered heavy losses with a Marc Gasol-Zach Randolph-Mike Conley core until things eventually clicked under Lionel Hollins. The rest is history. Chemical reactions take time in this sport, and the Pelicans may require more time than usual given the injury woes. At no time has everyone been available to work on the offensive sets and defensive rotations together. Ish Smith, who is playing 27 minutes per game, wasn't even on the team 24 hours before opening night.
Gentry’s degree of difficulty would have been huge even if everything broke right this season. Given the extra barriers to success, it’s really no wonder the Pelicans look so out of sorts. Why shouldn’t they? In time, perhaps things will settle into place and start to resemble the beautiful, effective basketball we expect.
Even in a lost year, they have time and they have Anthony freaking Davis. The Brow got off to a painfully slow start this season as defenses key in on him and fear essentially no other Pel. (Bemoan Evans all you like, but his incessant dribbling at least requires defenses to watch him. Ish Smith dribbling doesn't have the same impact.) Davis had to face Draymond Green, who appears to be in his head, twice in the first week.
But on Friday, in the game New Orleans has come closest to winning (a 6-point loss to Atlanta), Davis broke off one of those outrageous box scores few other big man can imagine: 43 points on 31 shooting possessions, 10 rebounds, three assists, four steals and three blocks. Even in a loss, it was a nice reminder that few other teams in the West have a trump card like AD.
That’s the salvation New Orleans will rely on through these impossibly difficult days: At least they have Anthony Davis. No losing streak can take that away. The other West teams competing for the No. 8 seed would do well to remember that as they come up against the Pelicans over the next month. You don’t want to let him hang around until the spring. Failing that, they will have interesting choices to make about who they want to be now and in the future.
