Willie Green Coach of Pelicans Interview 26 09 2025
Y’all already got a few scrimmages in. Just who’s kind of standing out to you so far that’s that’s really playing well early on. Um, honestly the group they they’re they’re competing. That’s what we love right now. They they are getting after each other. Um, you know, a little bit of aggressiveness and physicality and fouling, all the things that we love. Uh, but each and every day that just the entire group, they’re getting better and better. Um, I don’t know if I want to right now say who stands out, but we’ve had a number of guys have really good days. How does how does it feel like the newcomers fit in with this three? Again, we’re we’re getting better. It’s going to it’s going to take some work, which we expect, but when the guys are going out playing hard and they’re playing together and they’re competing, it’s easy to clean up, you know, some of the areas that uh we could be better in. Just our running habits, you know, what plays do we call, what spots do we go to defensively, how to cover for each other. So, those things are easy for us to clean up, but guys are they’re adjusting pretty well. Hey, when y’all go to Australia, do you get a chance to kind of know these guys like on a kind of a more personal level just because you’re spending more time with them? Is that something that kind of goes with that? Absolutely. That’s one of the things that we look forward to with trips like this is just getting to see a different side of, you know, our players, our staff, and um you want to come out of a trip like this with a with a with a good connection and and some some some bonds with your with your guys. For sure. And really, what have you seen out of Sadique Bay so far? you know, it’s been, I think, 18 months since he’s played. Uh, but he he’s a he’s a really good basketball player. Um, he has a high IQ defensively. He’s physical. He can guard multiple positions. Uh, he’s excited to be back on the floor, playing really well for us right now in our practices. And how do you see him fitting in your rotation? Like couple years ago, you had a lot of taller wings like Naji Marshall. Didn’t really have it so much last year. Is he going to be able to fill maybe that kind of role that you had a couple years ago with those guys? Yeah, absolutely. He fills that role well for us. I mean, he’s he’s a guy that has started plenty of games in his career. He’s come off the bench some. So, he’s he’s sort of that Swiss Army knife uh type of player. He can play multiple positions. He can score. He can post up. He can defend, rebound. Those guys like Sadique, they’re they’re extremely valuable to a team success, and we look forward to him stepping on the floor and that filling that role for us. Do you already have a clear idea of your starting lineup? You have a lot of ways you could go. Uh, we’re working on some lineups right now. Um, to your point there, there’s a lot of ways we can go with this. But we’re going to work with our lineup, see what looks best for us. Um, and then, you know, later in the preseason, we’ll make some decisions on that. With the first round picks, Michael Pedi is kind of flying under the radar a little bit, but watching him play, he definitely stands out. What do you like about him so far? Again, he he fits uh sort of our core characteristics of how we want to play. Um he’s number one high character young man. It starts with that on the floor. He’s extremely competitive. Uh he brings toughness. Um he’s a good defender. Uh he’s smart. Make make the right plays offensively. Doesn’t hurt you at all. and um he may be flying under the radar but not in practices. He is standing out big time. He’s one of our guys that’s doing really well. How do you think uh Queen has responded to not being able to participate as much? It’s killing him. It is killing him. I see it in his eyes, but he’s doing everything he can from a rehabilitation standpoint. He’s working, he’s conditioning, and um you know, when he’s ready, you know, we hope to get him back and get him on the floor and get him going. I guess what are y’all trying to do with him to help him kind of speed up that process of of making sure he’s ready once he’s healthy enough to play? Well, he’s jumping in some of our our drills. He can he can do some of that. You know, just a little bit of up and down, working with some of the coaches kind of before practice, after practice. Um but, you know, we won’t rush him. When he’s ready, you know, we’ll we’ll get the the heads up and when when that happens, he’ll be to step in and have more contact. And really, do you find yourself talking to uh Jordan Pool the most or amongst the most out of the players you’ve got? When we walked in, I saw you sitting there talking to him and he’s the new guy. Predict I guess he’s going to be maybe the starting point guard for this team. So, you just kind of connect with him. Um, you know, um, I plan on talking to all of our guys as much as I can. And I talked about it yesterday, I think after practice or morning’s practice is just the overcommunication with our players, explaining them what we expect, explaining to them the why. Um, that’s what you saw with uh Jordan and I just now is just talking through some of the details of practices, how he feels that he’s getting better and better with this group. And uh, we got a number of guys that can play, you know, on the ball, off the ball. He’s one of them. And you you talked on media day about just how much we saw Z improve defensively last year, especially when he came back from New Hampshire. How much does it change things for y’all when he’s impacting the game the way he did last year on? It changes things big time for us. Um it’s an expectation when you step on the floor to hold ourselves to a standard defensively. Uh Z has made strides in that area. We’re going to continue to push each other to to to hold up that standard. Um, but he’s on the floor with guys that get after it. So, um, he’s he fits right in with that group. What do you say that what do you hope to see out of Jordan Hawkins year three? Just keep improving. Keep improving. Um, keep being solid defensively. He’s a good rebounder. He’s a guy that can make shots for us that can score offensively. He can hoop. Uh, so we just want him to feel confident in what he can do on the floor. We’ll continue to help out where we can and and go out and hoop. If you want to talk to everybody, you could do like musical chairs on the flight to Australia like time speed dating. A lot of time a lot of time on that 20 hours I think that’s I can get a lot accomplished in communicating but I’m sure there’ll be guys sleep for 10 of those 20. Um, but we’ll definitely use this trip to to, you know, just create that camaraderie with our
New Orleans Pelicans head coach Willie Green speaks with the media following practice on Day 3 of Pelicans Training Camp at the Ochsner Sports Performance Center on Friday, Sept. 26, 2025.
Featuring Willie Green (Player).
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