DeMarcus Cousins trade does not ensure the Pelicans a playoff berth this season

Our collective reaction to the Pelicans’ side of the equation in the blockbuster DeMarcus Cousins trade was to presume New Orleans would now be in the best position to grab the No. 8 seed in the West. That would give Cousins his first-ever playoff berth and Anthony Davis another shot at the Golden State Warriors.

It might not be so easy.

The Pelicans are currently three games behind the No. 8 Denver Nuggets in the loss column. There are also two teams between Denver and New Orleans. One is the Kings, who should now fall out of the race. The other is Blazers, who are one game ahead of the Pels in the loss column, but traded a Plumlee for Jusuf Nurkic last week.

Let’s presume for a moment that the Kings disappear from this race, the Blazers make no significant run over the final two months, and the two teams narrowly behind New Orleans — Minnesota and Dallas — stay mediocre.

It would be helpful if we knew where the Nuggets are headed. While Denver is six games below .500 on the season, it’s really been a tale of two seasons: Before Nikola Jokic and after Nikola Jokic.

Jokic started a few games early in the season, but really took over the offense in mid-December when he became a permanent starter. Since Dec. 15, the Nuggets have gone 16-15, a .516 winning percentage. Denver has 26 games remaining. If the Nuggets were to win at the same rate they have since freeing Jokic, they’d end up with 38 or 39 wins.

The tiebreaker between Denver and New Orleans isn’t settled. The Nuggets won the first meeting on opening night, but the pair still has three matches to go, with the next not up until March 26.

New Orleans has just 25 games left. To get to 38-44, the Pelicans need to go 15-10. To get to 39-43, the Pels have to finish 16-9. To get to 40-42, New Orleans needs to finish 17-8.

The Pelicans started the season 2-10 as Jrue Holiday dealt with immense family trauma. Since Holiday joined the team in late November, the Pelicans have gone 21-24, a .467 winning percentage. It stands to reason that if Holiday had been available from opening night, the Pelicans would be 26-31 or 27-30 right now instead of 23-34. That is to say that if not for Holiday’s 12-game absence to begin the season, New Orleans would very likely be the No. 8 seed, just barely ahead of Denver right now.

Using that .467 winning percentage under the assumption that Holiday will remain with the team for the remainder of the season, we would now expect the Pelicans to finish 12-13 for a final record of 35-47, likely a few games out of the playoffs given our projections of where Denver is likely to end up.

Enter Boogie. Is DeMarcus Cousins the difference between a 38-win team (what the Pelicans seem to be without Holiday missing the first 12 games) and a 49-win team (what they need to be over the last two months to catch Denver)?

It’s quite possible that adding Cousins (who is immensely talented and a huge net positive on the court) and reducing minutes for less-effective players (including the outgoing Buddy Hield and New Orleans’ pre-existing rotational big men) will make up the gap. It’s easy to envision these new Pelicans winning 49 games over a full season.

But to do that on the fly while trying to add some shooting either at the deadline or (more likely) through the buyout market is going to be a tough slog. Far from assured, a Pelicans playoff berth isn’t even necessarily probable. There are only 25 games left and little margin for error.

The good news is that even if New Orleans misses out this year, they’ll have a full season of Davis and Cousins to look forward to next year and an offseason to refocus the roster to play to their strengths and cover their weaknesses. You just have to imagine taking advantage of the attainability of that No. 8 seed and cementing Boogie’s warm vibes about NOLA is a major goal right now.