Pelicans’ RISKY Offseason: Jordan Poole Trade, Derik Queen Gamble & Fan Survey Results

Pelicans’ RISKY Offseason: Jordan Poole Trade, Derik Queen Gamble & Fan Survey Results

From Joe Dumar to Jordan Pool to Derek Queen and Jeremiah Fears, fans are split on the front office. Here’s what it all means in the Friday 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 Locked On 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, JakeMadison, Nola Jake on Twitter. Here with y’all on this Friday, final show of the week, and we are still breaking down the locked Pelicans listener survey. I appreciate everyone who who filled that out and took the time and just for making Lockdown Pelicans part of your day. Whether you’re an everyday or not, we love y’all. And if you’re an everyday though, let me know in the comments down below. On this episode, we are I don’t even remember if I introduced myself. I’m your host, Puggin Insider, credential member of the media, JakeMadison, Nola Jake on Twitter. I can’t remember if I did already. Um, it’s a Friday. We’re ready for the weekend here. We’re looking at the front office. Jo confidence in Joe Dumar. I want to look at the offseason moves that they’ve made. Where does the Derek Queen trade grade out? How does it grade out? And then an interesting an interesting response about the direction of the frame chest. We got a lot to cover in today’s episode of Locked on Pelicans. This episode is brought to you by FanDuel. Football season is here and new customers can bet just $5. And if your bet wins, you’re going to get $300 in bonus bets. Download the FanDuel app from fanduel.com today to get started. And of course, thank you for making Lockdown Pelicans your first listen today and every day. We are 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 everyday or that means you listen Monday through Friday to the Locked On Pelicans podcast. Don’t forget you can also watch us on the GF Coast Sports and Entertainment Network every weekday at 10:30 a.m. Same place you watch your Pelicans play. So, let’s get into this one. Confidence in Joe Dumar. Let’s start at the top with Joe Dumar’s and the the whole front office in general. Fans rated their confidence in Joe Dumar. It was the question was how confident are you in Joe Dumar’s on a scale of 1 to five of a 2.7. You know, there’s some caution. There’s some skepticism there, but truthfully, as you’ve heard me say all week long, things were really down the middle. This still fits into there, but it’s on at least on the positive side of the middle. You know, it’s not a 2.4, 2.3, it’s a 2.7. You know, it’s not a total lack of faith, but it’s clear that the fan base is waiting for proof. You know, Joe Dumar’s inherited a roster that struggled with injuries, inconsistency, and when there while there have been moves, have those moves really moved the needle? This goes back to literally the first question of the survey here, which was, do you think this team is better or worse than a year ago? And for the most part, people said slightly better or about the same or slightly worse. It’s still just in the range. While Joe Dumars was brought in to make a lot of changes and he has made a lot of changes to the roster. Were those changes like the big enough moves, the needlemoving moves? And I think when you look at this, the answer is no. There’s also a lot of risk built into it. We’ll get into that with Derek Queen in the next segment here. Right? This is very much a pattern you see with small markets. The fan base is less forgiving when the results aren’t immediate. And for a fan base, look, you can, you know, maybe you disagree with me. me know. You know, that’s kind of starved for let’s have some success, please. Right? You know, for Dumar, the challenge is going to be simple. Win. That’s how you’re graded here, right? Build on, you know, everything you want to build on and win basketball games. You know, I said in a show the other day, you know, I think on Wednesday, that it was it takes a little bit to fully turn the roster over and maybe remake this team in the vision of Joe Dumar’s. We’re not there yet. it’s been year 1, year zero, however you want to look at it, there’s still plenty more time for him to make the bigger swings to really make some of the bigger changes that you think elevate this team. And currently, look, the team is trying a twotimeline approach. There’s very much that going on right now and that leads to that kind of sense of uncertainty that we’ve been talking about all week. We’ll talk a little bit more about that in the third segment of the show. But Dumar, you know, is is kind of inheriting, you know, a lot of baggage with this franchise, right? Can Dumar rebuild that trust with the fan base and establish a vision that fans can believe and even start to see over the next several seasons? That’s going to be his challenge here. You know, if he had stopped with the the Jordan Pool trade, I think you could get it. That Derek Queen trade is really going to be the big one. That’s the divisive move. We’ll talk more about that next, but it’s going to be interesting. You know, I also think how he was hired has probably not done a lot in his favor for making you feel confident in him. Look, his the end to his tenure in Detroit was not good. Went from being maybe the best executive in the league to one of the worst, and then to not run a team at a high level for 10 plus years, then get hired over here. You know, it doesn’t look particularly great that basically they had him hired before David Griffin was even fired. There was no even illusion of interviewing other people or doing a search or anything like that. They just hired a guy who’s known to be friendly with Mickey Lumis and ownership. That’s not going to inspire confidence in that. It wasn’t like he beat out the best people. Maybe you would have ended up hiring Joe Dumar had you done an exhaustive process, but you didn’t even get that, right? You can’t even be like, “Look at all the people that we thought he was better than.” You you you don’t even have that to compare it to. And certainly that’s not going to do him any favors in terms of perception. You know, I I blasted the process. I you know, I said, “Let’s see what Joe Dumar does give him, you know, he’s he’s here now. We’re hoping for the best.” So, we and we’ll evaluate those moves in a second. But the process was bad. The process was bad. Hiring Joe Dumar was lazy. doesn’t mean he won’t be great and we hope he’s great and we’re all rooting for him certainly but the process was atrocious truthfully was you know that’s not going to make people feel a lot of confidence in him that’s why it’s a 2.7 out of five I will say anecdotally looking at the the data and the responses here a lot of people are very excited from him just simply change for the sake of change a lot of people appreciate that he seems to be a straight talker and not and like less of a politician than David Griffin is even if I Lot of times David Griffin was kind of being, you know, a straight shooter, but Joe Dumar’s absolutely is. I will give you that one. I’ve seen a number of people in here say like just excited for a new front office and just a hopefully different direction. And they’ve definitely done a different direction, right, than what this team was doing before. What that direction is yet, I’m not sure, but there there’s multiple paths that they can take. Um, so you know, someone says here, “It feels like a new younger era.” You know, there’s something to be said for all of that, right? You know, a new identity and direction for the team. Again, what is the direction? I don’t think we know yet, but that’s something that is important to keep in mind. Someone says, “One of the things that excites you the most about the season, the acquisition of more entertaining players like pool and queen. It is an entertainment business after all.” So you see a number of things like that, you know, from Joe Dumar, but he has also put this team under a heaping amount of pressure, an unbelievable amount of pressure with that draft night trade for Derrick Queen. Let’s kind of look at the roster moves, the big moves that he’s made this off season. And then really the third segment is going to be really interesting to look at, you know, the direction of the franchise and look at the bigger picture of what should the front office’s priority be. That one jumped out at me. I can’t wait to talk about that’s in the third segment of today’s episode of Locked On Pelicans. Coming up, let’s look at some of the moves. Jeremi Fears, Derek Queen, Jordan Pool, and some other things 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 FanDuel. 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And that $5 bet wins over at fanduel.com. And thank you for making Locked on Pelicans your first listen today and every day. We are 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 Lockdown Pelicans podcast. If you’re an everydayer, let me know in the comments down below. I see y’all down there every single day. It’s a lot of fun. For your second listen, it’s Lockdown Saints. Ross Jackson’s making sense of everything black and gold there. Part of the Lockdown Podcast Network. your team every day. Make Lockdown Saints your second listen. All right, let’s look at the big roster moves this off seasonason and kind of see what you said about all of them. Let’s start with Jordan Pool. Let’s kind of go in order here. Jordan Pool fans were were mostly positive. You like the Jordan Pool move? I like the Jordan Pool move, too, for a variety of reasons. 75% rated the trade as somewhat positive or very positive. There’s that’s a lot of optimism about adding a proven score, someone who can contribute immediately while also fitting into the existing group. You know, it it’s a calculated gamble about pool maybe finding the right role here. But if he does, if he fits along Zion Williamson, he’s going to be a major boost for the team. The other thing to keep in mind is C.J. McCome was an expiring contract. Even if he fell off the books, the Pelicans are operating as an over-thecap team. So even if he expired, it’s not like you have $30 million to spend in free agency. Players also aren’t really changing teams in free agency like they used to in the past. So there’s no point in even really having salary cap space to like go free agent hunting. What you would use that salary cap space for is trading for other teams like bad contracts and making them attach picks to it. You’re essentially renting out your cap space for draft picks. It’s a smart thing to do. It’s what OKC did to kind of put them in the position that they’re in. It’s also unfun. There’s nothing fun about that, right? Like we talk about how it’s smart here on locked on Pelicans and the team would be losing games. It’s not a particularly fun thing to do. So keep that in mind about the Jordan Pool trade of he’s under contract for one more year and I’ve seen national media like trying to blast that. What else were the Pelicans gonna do with that money in the first place? If you’re gonna lose CJ for nothing and you couldn’t get production replacement in an equivalent level, that does you no good. Having cap space, if you’re not going to trade, if you’re going to try and be competitive and just overpay on mediocre free agents, that’s not better. The the extra year of Jordan Pool’s contract is very important to this team. It partially kicks the can down the road, right? You have him now and another year and you can figure out in a year what you want to do with him. Maybe you trade him for somebody else in a year. Who knows? But you have that flexibility that you did not have before with CJ McCullum. So I actually found that trade to be pretty smart. I also think Pool will fit in. He was been very underrated for the past two years as nobody has been watching watching him with the Washington Wizards who have been very very bad themselves. So I’m on board with the Jordan Pool trade here and I really like it. And 75% of y’all agree when you even get down into it, you know, the nitty-gritty with some of the details here of the Jordan Pool acquisition. Let me find it again here. When it comes to that trade, um, only 5.4% said somewhat negative and only 3% said very negative. And again, this is a couple hundred responses. What I found very funny was also with Jordan P. Do you think he’s going to average more or less than 20 points per game or fewer than 20 points per game? Whatever it is, it’s 5050. It’s literally it’s 49 a.5 to 50 and a half%. It’s 50/50 of more than 20 points per game or less than 20 points per game, which I think is kind of funny. Um, you know, depending on injuries, right? That might be the ultimate thing that kind of decides if he’s going to be, you know, what his exact role is going to be with this team. Let’s then move on to Jeremiah Fierce, right? The draft night. That’s where things get interesting. We’ll get to Derek Queen in a second here. On the other end of the spectrum here, right, fans are most excited to see Jeremiah Fears develop. You know, this has indicated a desire for some long-term growth and a recognition that the Pelicans needed an infusion of like young talent that could potentially be franchise cornerstones, part of a core that, you know, C.J. McCullum didn’t feel part of the core. You know, Herb Jones, I love Herb Jones. Has a little bit of limited upside there, right? He can still be part of the core, but that’s not an all-star level player. Jeremiah Fears is like the type of guy that if you hit on that pick, he’s going to be really good, and that’s the type of guy that you can build around going forward. And also, you just want young guys that you feel good about and you don’t feel particularly great about someone like Jordan Hawkins. The question was, which young player are you most excited to see develop next season? Jeremiah Fears with 52%, Derek Queen with 18.8%, Eve Mei with 22.8%. So more than more than Derrick Queen and Jordan Hawkins took 6.4% here. It it seems like with the injuries he’s had, the inconsistent shooting in play that people are kind of out on Jordan Hawkins. So you needed just like some bankable young guys that you feel really good about, you know, in terms of So Jeremiah Fears, who I was really high in, like seems to be the right kind of guy, you know, in terms of Derek Queen, this is this is the riskier one. Derek Queen basically cost you two almost three picks to to go and get. The trade on a scale of 1 to 10, I ask you what you felt about it was rated a 4.8. You know, for people who are like this is the worst trade ever. I don’t know how you can say otherwise. Plenty of people are saying otherwise, right? 4.8 is still right in the middle of it. It’s not great. You’d like to see that being like a 6 7 8 9 10. People don’t love it, but people aren’t like, “This is the worst trade I’ve ever seen.” And in fact, if you look at the comments in here that I have, a lot of people are pretty excited about what he can do because he’s such a unique big, right? But I will say that 4.8 out of 10 says that was just too high of a risk for what the team gave up in next year’s unprotected future first round pick. You know, it it kind of shows that this fan base isn’t ready to gamble on like heavil like gamble heavily on unproven upside. You’ve seen some of this too with guys that they’ve drafted. Raw guys with really interesting skill sets that haven’t panned out. Did Ky Lewis Jr. pan out? No. Right. Eve me still very raw is going to take more time to develop even at least if he’s shown kind of the flashes and the potential that you want. But the Derek Queen one is just such a risky move in year one of your plan that heaped tons of pressure on this organization. They have to be good. There’s no point in being bad because you don’t have your first round pick next year. That I think has scared a lot of people. You know, Joe Dumar said the plan is to be aggressive and that’s what that draft night trade said, but it’s also the type of move that you’re like very much questioning. One of the other things Joe Dumar said was like, “If we want a lottery pick in next year’s draft, we can always get another lottery pick, but you’re gonna have to overpay for that, too.” And so, it’s all of a sudden like, is there bad asset management going on? That comes back to that 2.7 out of five for Joe Dumar’s, you know, it feels like, are they being smart and really thinking through things or they’re just like, “Let’s do things to do things like a little bit of a Leroy Jenkins kind of move to this.” And it does feel that way. But that Dererick Queen trade, I think the 4.8 out of 10, so basically a five, kind of shows you that this isn’t considered like the awful awful thing when it comes to it. And frankly, just getting some young guys in, right? What excites you most about this season? I can’t tell you other than like Trey Murphy making a leap and some other things and some really funny answers in there, too. Was that people are excited for the young guys, right? Someone said the potential. Someone said having young guys to root for, right? Rookies, young team, um, new new direction, new players. All of those are things that people are very excited about and sometimes you just need to add some excitement to this team. And look, the Pelicans did something here. So, that I do think is an important thing, right? Someone said, “Watching the rooks, resetting my hope for that, seeing young players develop, all of that is a really important thing. You need those type of guys.” The Pelton were kind of lacking those young guys that you feel really good about, really excited about. They gave too much up certainly, and that’s a little bit scary, and that’s tempered people’s views on this team. There’s a there’s a really good stat that I’ll share with y’all from the survey here stat response um in all of this, but it kind of shows that the team just needed some like infusion of energy and youth is sometimes the best way to go about doing that. You know, that Derrick Queen trade shows not most people wouldn’t have taken that risk and it’s definitely risky. I agree with you. But if Derrick Queen does develop, we’re going to forget about this so quickly. The big question is will he? I’ve talked to a lot of NBA experts and they’re not particularly high on Derek Queen. So, keep that in mind as well. So, coming up next, I want to answer one of arguably, in my opinion, the most interesting question here, which was basically like, you know, what do you think the front office needs to p I just lost where it was here. Where is that question? It was basically I don’t even know where it went. It’s one of the pie charts. Hold on, I’m finding it. I’m just going to talk through it. Okay, here we go. Which of these should the front office should be the front office’s priority this season? That answer really surprised me. I’ll tell you what that is coming up here next in today’s episode of Locked On Pelicans. And thank you for making Locked On Pelicans your first listen today and every day. We are 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 everyday. That means you listen Monday through Friday to the Locked On Pelicans podcast. And if you’re an Everyday, let me know in the comments down below. Your second listen, Locked on NBA, we’re covering Euro Basket. We’re covering all the biggest rumors around the association. I’m on there every Friday. Go make locked on NBA your second listen today. Catch up with what’s going on around the league. Part of the Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every day. So finally, let’s talk about the big picture around this team. Kind of the direction of the Pelicans franchise. One of the questions was, you know, how confident are you? Rate your overall confidence 1 through 10 in the direction of this team. And that was lower. It’s four and a 4.6 out of 10, right? A lot of that has to do with the uncertainty here. That’s one of the themes that has come up throughout this survey through this week. The survey results show a lot of uncertainty. And on a question that is what should the Pelicans front office’s top priority be? This was really telling one. It it had the biggest kind of mix of things. The the other thing though is the number one answer at near 30% 29.2% was preserving flexibility for the future. The other options were finding a true point guard, upgrading center depth, which finished second at 25.7%. 22.8% 8%. So third was adding more shooting. Other was about 9% or so. So the number one answer above adding more shooting, upgrading center depth was don’t don’t do anything dumb. Basically don’t do anything that’s a shortterm move. fans are not ready to go allin on a win now approach and would rather keep their options open for future trades, future flexibility, whether that’s free agency, roster construction, what have you. Right? That move for Derek Queen was super risky. Super risky. And I think people are a little scared of what Joe Dumar might do here. But also again, what are they trying to do? Are they trying to win now? Are they trying to develop these young guys? And truthfully, my answer to this would have been preserve flexibility or upgrade center depth. When you look at it of, hey, they’re trying to develop these youngest, but they’re also trying to win now, and those are often at odds, and you have a head coach that is going to be fighting for his job and maybe not playing rookies then, right? Like, when you look at the overall direction, all of those things are conflicting for the most part. You shouldn’t feel good about the direction for this franchise because they don’t have a clear direction just yet. They will at some point, but they don’t right now, right? And so that’s why the overall confidence in the team due to the uncertainty is middling right now. It reflects a sense the roster could go either way. The team has talent. Zion, Trey, promising young pieces, but whether that group’s good enough to win right now remains to be seen. You know, again, Joe Dum Mars has tools and options, and the fan base is waiting to see what he is going to do. And I think he might be waiting to see what he’s going to do. Because look, one strong season or good development of these young players and a couple of wins can dramatically change the perception of everything here. But right now, it’s just so uncertain. That is a prevailing theme throughout the whole week here. Uncertainty with this franchise. in the everydays have heard me say this repeatedly. A lot of y’all agreed with me in the in in the comments of this of the survey of yeah, they’re on two timelines. We got to wait to see what they’re going to do because two timelines ain’t it. We’ve seen every not every but tons of NBA teams try that and it hasn’t worked. So, this fan base is kind of in a wait andse approach and thus preserving flexibility kind of fits into that, right? Like that absolutely ties to a wait andsee approach of preserved flexibility for the future, right? When you know one of the questions which maybe we’ll talk about more on Monday here is what concerns you most about the season and it’s literally just health injuries injuries health injuries injuries. All of that, right? You know, wondering if if Joe Dumar is going to make the right move, Dererick Queen’s conditioning, coaching. It’s all of these things that until we see otherwise are concerning could get cleared up. All of this could easily be cleared up, right? But because it’s not, the fan base is feeling cautious. I think people don’t want to get their hopes up and get burned again or feel like they’re getting burned again, which has happened repeatedly under this franchise, right? So fans are cautiously optimistic about Joe Dumar’s largely positive on Jordan Pool, wary very much on Derek Queen, but excited for young guys like like Jeremiah Fierce. There’s a lot going on in what I just said right there. And I think the fan base kind of realizes that, right? The two timelines approach is what they’re doing for this moment, but it won’t be the whole season. they’re going to hit a point whether they’ve just lost so many games or they’ve won so many games or they’re just stuck in the middle and there’s no point in that that they’re going to need to do some things and pick a more likely path and kind of focus on that and kind of push your chips in on development on win now whatever it might be we’ll find out what that is maybe within the first 10 games I would assume by the end you know mid December we’ll have a very clear understanding of this team and what they should be doing and we’ll be able to judge it appropriately. And I, you know, we’ll put the same survey out next year. I’m going to do this yearly. Now, y’all ain’t getting rid of me on lockdown pelicans. And I’m going to be really curious to see how it’s kind of changed and compare it year-over-year for everything here because this this was an illuminating survey for a variety of reasons, hence why we’ve been talking about it all week long. Well, I’m on vacation. So, if some news broke this week, we’ll get to it on Monday. But I do think this was a really interesting thing to try and see and and kind of learn about where everyone’s feeling. And it’s kind of about what I expected with everything. But some eyeopening things in there, I think. I actually thought the upgrading the center position would have run away with that question. But I think people realize like what is this team doing? We need to wait and see. So, let’s not make a short-sighted move that mismanages assets, draft assets, other things going forward. So, that’s going to do it for this episode of Locked on Pelicans. As always, I’m your host Jake Madison at Nola Jake on Twitter. This is the Locked On Pelicans podcast, part of the Locked On Podcast Network, your team every day, all survey all week long. I enjoyed this. I hope y’all did too. Let me know what you think in the comments down below. And I’ll be back with y’all on Monday. I will be back hopefully a little bit tanner from the beach. Looking forward to talking Pelicans with y’all as we get closer to media day and training camp. That’s like around the corner. We’ll start previewing that soon. Appreciate y’all and I’ll see you all next time.

Are the New Orleans Pelicans on the right track? Fan confidence in Joe Dumars and recent moves reveals a franchise at a crossroads.

Jake Madison breaks down the results of a listener survey, exploring reactions to the Jordan Poole trade, Jeremiah Fears draft pick, and Derik Queen acquisition. The host analyzes fan sentiment on the team’s direction, highlighting the desire for future flexibility over immediate success. Madison dissects the conflicting priorities of developing young talent while aiming for playoff contention.

Tune in for an in-depth look at the Pelicans’ strategy and what it means for stars like Zion Williamson and Trey Murphy.

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