Pelicans’ Defensive Woes SOLVED? Jeremiah Fears’ Hidden Value | What Roles will Rookies Have?

Pelicans’ Defensive Woes SOLVED? Jeremiah Fears’ Hidden Value | What Roles will Rookies Have?

If Jeremiah Fierce plays like he did in the Pelicans fourth summer league game, he’s going to not just massively help the Pelicans on offense, but on defense, too. A little confused? I’ll explain in today’s episode of Locked On Pelicans. Let’s go. You are Locked On Pelicans, your daily New Orleans Pelicans podcast, part of the Locked On Network. your team every day. Welcome to another edition of Locked On Pelicans, the daily podcast covering your favorite team, the New Orleans Pelicans and NBA, part of the Lockdown Podcast Network. Your team every day, available wherever you get your podcast and available on YouTube. I’m your host, Pelicans insider, credential member of the media, Jake Madison at Nola Jake on Twitter. here with y’all on this Thursday and we’ve got a lot to cover after Jeremiah Fierce just lit it up really in my opinion in his fourth preseason game and that’s going to have a bigger impact on the Pelicans defense than you might think. This is a show I’ve been wanting to do for a while so I’m excited about this one. Perfect segue into this topic. But are the rookies going to play that much in the first place? That’s the rundown of today’s show here. Today’s episode of Locked On Pelicans is brought to you by Monarch Money. Take control of your finances with Monarch Money. Use code lockdown NBA at monarchmoney.com for 50% off your first year. And of course, thank you for making Lockdown Pelicans your first listen today and every day. We’re here Monday through Friday, the number one Pelicans podcast, covering everything you want to know about this Pelicans team. So, please subscribe wherever you get your podcast and join over 11,000 Pelicans fans on YouTube as well, almost 12,000 on YouTube as well. And don’t forget, you can watch us on the GF Coast Sports and Entertainment Network. Same place you watch your Pelicans play every single weekday at 10:30 a.m. And of course, become an everydayer. That means you listen Monday through Friday to the Locked On Pelicans podcast. And if you’re an everydayer, let me know in the comments down below. Look, if you listen one day a week, try even it twice a week. Right now, we are not planning at all on dropping to three days a week this off season. I’m going to stay five days a week on the show. So, we’re going to have tons of content coming to y’all just for everything here. But, I’m really excited to talk about this show today. Uh, the second segment is one I’ve wanted to get into for a while. It has to deal with the Pelicans defense, what went wrong last year, and how they can fix it. And I’m going to tell you how Jeremiah Fears is going to play a really big role in that. But I want to start with looking at his game the other night um against the Oklahoma City Thunder Pelicans losing their fourth preseason 0 and4 preseason summer league 0 and4 so far in summer league 9581 again wins losses don’t really matter to me when it comes to this but Jeremiah Fears played great in this one no Derek Queen but for fears in 30 minutes of action 22 points on eight of 15 shooting one of five that number is not good but whatever from three five of eight from the free throw line. Six rebounds, six assists, just four turnovers. You finally saw the assist numbers jump up for him. You know, you saw the the finishing at the rim get really better. This was the best game we’ve seen from him. And that steady improvement in summer league just gradually getting better at finishing and adjusting to kind of the speed and figuring out how he needs to play. You know, you could see him have more of a plan of attack and what he was trying to do here, whereas before he would just kind of drive without any sort of idea. But here you saw him be a little bit more of a cerebral player. Almost looking like he was thinking two or three kind of moves, actions ahead in this one and allowed him to finish around the rim really well. At one point he didn’t miss inside the restricted area. Basically in the restricted area, it’s 1 2 3 4 5 six seven shot attempts and he went six for seven in that area. That’s that’s a really good number for him and I’m very pleased with what we saw from Jeremiah Fears in this game. He has an incredible ability to get downhill and attack. He can find room. He can find room even when there’s like a lack of spacing around him. And so to finish the way that he did is phenomenal. And you saw him getting fouled going to the line. You saw clearly, you know, he needs to add some strength to go along with this to finish through contact better. But now he wasn’t getting himself into trouble where he would drive would realize what he wanted to do isn’t there and and then what? right now. All of a sudden, he’s he’s processing the game at a higher level. And by doing that, you saw him kick the ball out a little bit more than what we’ve seen from him in the past. He wasn’t getting his shot blocked as much. If he went down there and it wasn’t there, he knew to kick out to an open shooter in a in a corner, whether it was Trey Alexander who shot the three ball particularly well in this one. He was, by the way, five of nine off the bench from three. 25 points overall, the leading scoreer for the Pelicans. Um, even more points than Jeremiah Fears. But you just saw more of a plan and him looking more like a point guard really, not just a dude getting downhill and attacking and it being as simple as that. That’s the type of growth that you’ve wanted to see from Jer for Jeremiah Fears. You’ve seen improvement in every single game that he has played. That might be one of the more encouraging things that we see from him. And look, the way he’s played in summer league, even if the shooting hasn’t always been there, the jumper definitely hasn’t been there at all. I’m less worried about that if he can do these other things really well because him scoring at the rim is actually going to be something that’s more important for the New Orleans Pelicans, I think, than three-point shooting. Well, and this is going to tie into what we’re going to talk about in the next segment here. The Pelicans were one of the worst shooting teams at the rim last season. They were fourth worst when it came to rim field goal percentage. Jeremiah Fears playing like this getting downhill and attacking is really going to help that. Zion Williamson coming back is also really going to help this too. But for a team that’s got Zion on it where let’s assume that he’s healthy, right? They’re going to be going to the foul line a lot. They will be in the bonus early and getting to the charity stripe. Take advantage of that. And how many games last year or just throughout Zion’s tenure, right? Has a team been in the bonus early in a quarter and then they don’t end up going to the line anymore because they’re just shooting mid-rangers or something like that. there’s just not that downhill aggressive attacking style. You know, I I can think of a lot of times, right? Just off the top of my head, I can think of games that you wanted to pull your hair out from that with someone like Jeremiah Fears. Again, the zero fears is really accurate here. He’s not going to stop. Like, this dude is is relentless, right? Getting downhill, attacking the basket, and trying to put pressure on the rim. And that is something that the Pelicans have been missing from the guard position for a really long time. Even Rondo when he was here wasn’t capable of doing anything like that, right? That wasn’t really Drew Holiday’s game either. They haven’t had someone who can do this at such a high level maybe since Chris Paul was here. And even then, he was kind of a different kind of point guard than Jeremiah Fierce is. So to see Fierce doing this, playing downhill, attacking like this and and finally having a good game where he’s finishing against a Thunder team that was undefeated going into this, right? So they’re they’re a good summer league team, whatever that means. I was pretty happy. You know, I I’m still very high on Jeremiah Fierce. I was high on him going into the draft. Was happy that the Pelicans drafted him. Nothing has changed my mind about that. I you know he’s gonna take some time and I don’t know how much he’s going to help at the NBA level next season but look if you can just do this that’s gonna go a long way and that then leads me to the larger point I want to make and I maybe should have led with this in the first segment but this is a show I’m excited to do because this is something I’ve been looking at and watching on for a while and we we’ll do another show on this closer to the start of the season but if he can finish like this around the rim it’s really gonna help the Pelicans defense I’ve been talking about his offense the whole I don’t think he’s going to be a positive on the defensive side of the ball, but I think his offense, his offense is going to help the Pelicans defensively. And I’ll explain what I mean by that coming up here next in today’s episode of Locked On Pelicans. Today’s episode of Lockown Pelicans is brought to you by Open Phone. 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And they have an AI agent that handles after hours calls, answers common questions, and captures leads so you never miss a customer. And Open Phone is offering Lockdown Pelicans listeners a uh 20% off your first 6 months at openphone.com/lockdonba. That’s op ho ne.com/lockedonba. If you have an existing number with another service, Open will port them over at no extra charge. Open phone, no missed calls, no missed customers. And thank you for making Locked on Pelicans your first listen today and every day. We’re here Monday through Friday, the number one Pelicans podcast covering everything you want to know about this Pelicans team. So please subscribe wherever you get your podcast and join over 11,000 Pelicans fans on YouTube as well. And become an everydayer. That means you listen Monday through Friday to the Locked on Pelicans podcast. Watch us on the GF Coast Sports and Entertainment Network as well. For your second listen, it’s locked on Saints with Ross Jackson. Tyler Shook going to sign his contract. That’s going to start happening soon, I believe. So hopefully that gets done very soon here and we can start seeing him more in training camp in preeason. I’m excited. Ross Jackson over the Lockdown Saints podcast, part of the Lockdown Podcast Network. Your team every day is covering it all. Make him your second listen today. So, I want to get into this topic here that has to do with the Pelicans defense. After a couple years of really good defense, really good defense under head coach Willie Green, it fell off a cliff last year. Per basketball dash reference, the Pelicans ranked 29th out of 30th in terms of defensive rating. The year before that, they were seventh. The year before that, they were sixth. They have generally been a very good defensive team under head coach Willie Green until last year. And while injuries played a big part of that, right, no Herb Jones for a chunk of the season is gonna mean you’re not going to be as good defensively, a big part of it has to do with the finishing at the rim. So, I want to go through a couple of things here. You know, when you look at scoring opportunities, like just in terms of efficiency, the number one area to score from is from the free throw line. Free throw opportunities have the highest efficiency in the NBA. Number two is transition offense. So whatever that looks like, whether it’s threes to transition offense, you have a man advantage. You should be able to score. It’s really as simple as that. If you look at the offensive rating of teams in transition versus the offensive rating of them in the half court, it’s miles better, miles better in transition opportunities. Then it goes to the rim, then it goes to corner threes. Those are how it how it works, right? Three-pointers, corner threes aren’t are fourth. So transition defense needs to be good. Otherwise, you’re just leaking points and giving scoring opportunities to your opponent. Last season, the Pelicans allowed the third most transition opportunities. Teams ran against them, got into transition against the Pelicans defense 16.6% of the time. That was third worst in the league. Now, when you hear transition opportunities, right, what do you normally think of? It’s a rhetorical question. You’re thinking turnovers, right? But, you know, that’s not going to be the case. It was a trick question. We’ll answer it in a second. you think turnovers, but the Pelicans rank 19th in turnover percentage. So that doesn’t exactly correlate to third most transition defensive opportunities for opponents, right? So look, 19th isn’t good, but you’re not bottom 10 in the league at that point. So to go from 19th and then, you know, basically 29 out of 30 in transition opportunities allowed, it doesn’t quite add up. So what it is, and it goes to the number I told you in the in the first segment here, the Pelons were the fourth worst shooting team at the rim. They shot 62.6 7% at the rim. That was fourth worst. 62.7%. What happens here is when you blow layups, right? That’s what this is. You’re missing layups. If you miss layups immediately, provided you don’t get the offensive rebound. The opponent is in transition from the get-go, right? It’s not like you’ve got to corral a defensive board that maybe caramed a little bit, went further, and then get out and run. You know, it’s not like you turn the ball over and maybe your guards can get back and and kind of hustle back for it. When you are immediately turning when when you miss a layup, your man who’s trying to score the layup, right? Where do they finish? Where do they end up? They’re under the basket. They’re on the baseline. They’re sometimes like off the court, right? So immediately the opponent has a five on four fast break opportunity at the very worst. It could get better. It could be three on, you know, threeon-one or what have you. That’s what happened to the Pelicans a ton. It wasn’t the turnovers that killed him and allowed opponents to run against them in transition. It was them missing layups because teams immediately get into transition opportunities. And when there’s just line ball turnovers, it’s not always a transition opportunity. Go back and watch basically any sort of miss at the rim and teams run against those because they immediately have a man advantage. That’s what happened to the Pelicans an absolute tun last season. So, if you can have a guard, whether he’s a rookie or whoever, play downhill, attack the basket, and actually finish well, it eliminates so many of those transition opportunities. And now, when you score, your opponent has to get the ball, step to the baseline, and inbound the ball. That time it takes allows a defense to get back and get set. And all of a sudden, now you’re forcing your opponent to play far more in the half court. The Pelicans weren’t a good half court defense last year, but I’d rather them be doing that, playing in um half court defense versus transition offense. Let me pull what the numbers are here. Pelicans had a halfcourt defensive rating. They were fourth worst of 100. Let’s see what it is in transition opportunities here where they were third worst in terms of scoring. So, it was 100.8. 8 in the half court. It’s 100 point. It’s 130.1. So it’s about let’s call it 30 points per 100 possessions more in transition. Right? That’s how brutal that is. That’s how absolutely brutal it is to be in transition. That is that’s massive, right? Like that’s massive a massive difference. 30 points per 100 possessions is a massive difference. So, you’d rather play in the half court even if you’re not good versus playing in transition, right? We just said the Pelicans who had the second worst half half court defense or something like that was bottom four at 100.8. The best transition defense was Boston this year. They had a defensive rating of 114.1, right? That’s a 14 point differential per 100 possessions right there. That tells you, you know, how much transition can hurt you. Best way to stop transition is one turnovers, but overall the Pelicans did all right with that last year. Not good, but they weren’t abysmal with it. It was bricking shots at the rim. It was missing shots at the rim and just gifting opponents those transition opportunities. The Pelicans need to be better than fourth worst when it comes to finishing at the rim like they’ve been in the past. And that will make a world of difference for them if they do that sort of thing. And if you do that, then all of a sudden this defense can get fixed. You’re not going to win very many games when you have the second worst defense in the league, are you? But this is an easier fix, I think, than people realize. You can have some very mediocre at best defenders, but if you’re scoring like crazy, your defense can get back and get set and at least you’re just playing in the half court and that is significantly better than what they had been doing. So, this is where I think there’s a ton of room for improvement and someone like Jeremiah Fears can really help them immediately when it comes to this sort of thing. That’s the type of help that you want to see from him here because if you can fix this, the Pelicans can get much much better. And it doesn’t need to be, you know, a massive jump. You just can’t finish fourth worst. If you can get, you know, to middle of the pack, which is truly where they’ve been the past couple of years when it comes to, you know, shooting at the rim, they’re going to be immediately a better defense than they were before. And I think that’s going to be the easiest way to do it. And Jeremiah fears his offense, assuming he’s making shots like this, and we’ve seen the improvement. I think he’ll add a little bit of muscle on before the season starts. I think he will improve in this area with just his processing, with his planning. That’s going to make the Pelicans defense better. And I never really thought until I kind of did a little bit of a deeper dive into it after this game that when you drafted Jeremiah Fierce as a rookie, I mean, like, he’s going to help the Pelicans defense. It’s not exactly how you think. It’s not by forcing steals. It’s not like by being a standout defender. Just make your freaking baskets. And I think that is an area that’s really going to help this team. Look, getting Zion back is going to help with it, too. That’s a dude who finishes around the rim exceptionally well and is going to immediately elevate the Pelicans into that area, especially if they can find a little bit of spacing to make his life even easier. That’s going to go a really long way towards helping them, too. You know, a healthy Zion fixes so many things. it feels like um for this team, right? Zion for his career shoots 70.2% in the restricted area. Last year was one of the his worst since his rookie year and that was 68%. So still well above what the Pelicans were shooting there. Two years ago when he played 70 games, he shot 72% at the rim. The year before that, 72% as well. Those are incredible numbers. So, this is very doable for the Pelicans and it’s immediately going to help their defense, which is something they do need to focus on. But, are the rookies actually going to play that much? An interview with Joe Dumar that we’ll talk more about later in the week kind of sheds some light on that. I want to break that down that’s coming up here next in today’s episode of Locked On Pelicans. Today’s episode of Locked On Pelicans is brought to you by Monarch Money. You ever wish managing your money felt easier? 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So please subscribe wherever you get your podcast and join over 11,000 Pelicans fans on YouTube as well. And become an everydayer. That means you listen Monday through Friday to the Locked On Pelicans podcast. And if you’re an everydayer, let me know in the comments down below. I look every day. I see y’all even if I’m not commenting on there every single day. So, for your second listen, find the LockedNBA podcast where there is no offseason. Doug, Matt, and Hayes keep you up to date on contract negotiations, rumors, and everything you need to be the most informed NBA fan. Find Lockdown NBA on YouTube or wherever you listen to podcast, part of the Locked On podcast network, your team every day. All right, I loved the last segment. I I I think figuring out what happened with the defense is one of the more interesting things. It wasn’t just they were injured and bad. There’s a lot more like insight and nuance to it and that’s why you want to start listening every day to locked on Pelicans. No one else is talking about stuff like that, especially right now. We got you covered with the insight you want to hear and stuff that’s going to matter to the team. Let me know what you thought about that segment in the comments down below. I want to wrap up today’s show and we’ll talk more about this interview that Joe Dumars gave to Mark Spears in Anscape probably in tomorrow’s show, maybe the day after that. We’ll see. But he gave a very revealing and insightful interview just the other day and I I want to spend more time breaking all of that down. But he talked a lot about I got to pull up the exact quote and everything here of looking at these guys that they’ve brought in and kind of building the team. And one of the things that they asked here was and here’s the question from Mark Spears. What drew you to select fears with the fifth pick in the 2025 NBA draft and move up via trade to select Queen with the 13th selection? Here’s the response from Joe Dumar’s. Quote, “Both of them have potential to grow into great players, but I also wanted to build a team that didn’t put all the pressure on them that they have to come in and prove their great day one. I want them to be able to to develop into great players without trying to force it from day one. It’s why you see the roster built the way we did.” End quote. Right? There’s a lot of redundancy here, I think. You know, you look at the team and if you were to take Fears and Queen out, they could, you know, it depends on how you feel about the roster and some of the players, but there’s enough talent here for them to be competitive. I’m not going to say they’re a surefire playoff team or anything like that, right? I’m I I don’t know just yet. And maybe there’s another move coming for this roster, but it’s different than it was before. You know, he talked about, you know, in the question previously when they said, “What attracted you to trade for guard Jordan Pool?” quote, “If you look around the league now, it’s almost a requirement to have high level guard play, dynamic guard play. Jordan has a skill set that matches the most dynamic guards in this league. We’ve also seen him be part of a championship team and contribute at a high level. So, with his skill set, he’s a dynamic guard and I know we have proof that he’s helped teams win championships. I look at those things and say, I want him here. I want to tap into all of what he’s experienced so far.” End quote. You know, when you hear that quote when and and we’ll focus on the Dejante Murray part of this, too, because he spent a lot of time talking about Dejante Murray, I I wonder how much fears and queen are going to be playing right away. And I like the idea that you’re not just throwing them into the fire and being like, here are the a bevy of expectations that are heaped upon you. And look for queen for better or worse he’s going to have large expectations on his shoulders that he did not ask for that he does not necessarily deserve but because of the trade up to go and get him. So this is Joe Dumar trying to take the pressure off of these players and really take their time developing them and not throwing them into a situation where they’re going to fail which is smart. I don’t know if that’s what you wanted necessarily want to do, but I I like get what he’s kind of accomplishing here in trying to say and other moves they’ve made kind of factor in maybe these rookies won’t get a ton of playing time because he understands rookies might not help you win games right away. Though, fierce finishes like he did in this game, you’re going to get help both offensively and defensively just by that alone as we just went over. But I do wonder if this hints at what the role is going to be for these rookies. I think there’s definitely an opportunity for them to earn significant minutes their rookie year, but I also think this is Joe Dumar’s being like, I like the team we got. We’re not as reliant on them. It’s going to be, you know, Zion. It’s going to be Trey Murphy. It’s going to be Jordan P. He’s putting a ton of pressure on those guys, you know, by taking pressure off of Fears and Queen. Probably the right move. Those are the guys where the pressure should be on, I think. So, it’s going to be interesting to see the balance, you know, and does that mean that Queen and Fears don’t get playing time because that doesn’t seem smart to me. You’ve got to kind of balance that development, but also try and win now because the Pelicans have no choice but to try and win now. I’m curious how this is all going to play out. You know, we’re going to do a show as we get closer to the season of what does the rotation look like? Let’s do that when we know what the roster is going to be and maybe Fears will get a bunch of minutes. Maybe queen will get a bunch of minutes, but maybe they don’t. I think, you know, both are realistic options. It’s going to be interesting to see and I’m not sure which direction it’s going to go just yet. Maybe, you know, in the final summer league game. We’ll see. Queen, by the way, had his hand wrapped, did not play in this game. We’ll see if that’s a serious thing or not. Hopefully not. We don’t want to see injuries already happening to this Pelicans team, but of course. Right. So, more on this Joe Dumar’s interview. I thought he said some very revealing things about DeJonte Murray and I want to get into what that could mean for Murray’s future with the team as well. So, there’s a lot to break down from that. We’ll be covering it here on the Lockdown Pelicans podcast, part of the Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every day. As always, I’m your host JakeMadison, Nola Jake on Twitter. Subscribe wherever you get your podcast and on YouTube as well. Watch us on the GF Coast Sports and Entertainment Network. Just leave that channel on all day long or at least from 10 until noon so you can watch all the locked on shows. I’ll be back with you all tomorrow. We’ll talk more summer league. We’ll talk Joe Jumar’s in the interview and everything you want to know about this team. See y’all next time.

New Orleans Pelicans defense takes center stage. Can summer league standout Jeremiah Fears be the key to unlocking their potential?

Jake Madison analyzes Fears’ impressive performance and its implications for the Pelicans’ defensive woes. The discussion covers last season’s struggles, the impact of finishing at the rim on transition defense, and Joe Dumars’ intriguing comments on rookie roles. Madison explores how improving layup efficiency could dramatically boost the team’s defensive rating.

Tune in for expert insights on the Pelicans’ path to defensive redemption and the potential roles of their young talent.

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