Can You Trust Zion? | New Orleans Pelicans Fantasy Basketball Breakdown

Can You Trust Zion? | New Orleans Pelicans Fantasy Basketball Breakdown

Let’s talk about the New Orleans Pelicans for this upcoming season. Where is the value? Who is undervalued? Overvalued? Who do we pay attention to? The stars, the breakouts, it’s all coming up. Michael Bolton. Thanks, Josh. It’s Michael Bolton here and it’s time for another episode of the Locked On Fantasy Basketball Podcast. Let’s get to it. Let’s get to it indeed. You are Locked on Fantasy, your daily NBA fantasy podcast, part of the Locked On podcast network, your team every day. Hello and welcome to the Locked On Fantasy Basketball Podcast, brought to you by Basketball Monster. My name is Josh Lloyd and I’ll have 20 cents worth of mixed lollies, please. I’m also the lead fantasy analyst at basketball.com and today’s episode is brought to you by FanDuel. Right now, new customers can bet just $5. And if your bet wins, you’ll get $300 in bonus bets to use across the app. Head to fandel.com to get started. Thank you also for making locked on fantasy basketball your first listen every day. We are free. We are available on all platforms. Few spots left for locked on fantasy basketball. Linkree/FB bowl. Join up. When it fills 10 spots left, we will release some more. Maybe another points league. If you do want another points league locked on fantasy basketball bowl, can you please drop it in the comments? cuz it’s 120 people per league. We’ve got over 1,000 teams going through at the moment. Um, so if you do want another one, let me know and I’ll open it. But I don’t want to be there and 30 people are in a unit. So if you are watching this and you want a spot in lockdown fantasy basketball points league, drop it. Or category league, drop it as well. We’ll see what we do with that. Auction leagues will come up this week at some point. Also, um you can enter the FBI Fantasy Basketball World Cup. That is a worldwide tournament that lasts well, it’s been going on for years. 12 team leagues, 14man rosters, pretty standard settings. There is multiple reddrafts during different phases of the season as well. And all the entry information for that for the guys at FBI basketball are all the entry information. Yeah, information. I’ll try again. registration forms. The link to that is in the description on audio and on the video side. So, if you want to join the FBI World Cup, a different sort of fantasy basketball tournament, there’s a locked on fantasy basketball bowl as well. You can join all of those. Click the link in the description of this video or of this podcast to join into those leagues. We are here talking about your New Orleans Pelicans for this upcoming season. And I’ll preface this because there is an overriding stink on this team. Everything that I’m going to say about this team has to be prefaced with this. They have the worst front office in recent memory. Troy Weaver has been a disaster. And from all reports, he is calling the shots. Why you would give him another job, I have no idea. He is calling the shots in New Orleans. Joe Dumar has not been involved in basketball operations for a team for years. And the previous times that he was was the last little run in Detroit which was terrible. He’s been working with the league office. They didn’t do any sort of extensive search for their front office grouping. Gail Benson Joe Dumar brought him in. He knew Troy Weaver brought him in and it’s bad. They do not have control of their first round pick next season because they made one of the worst trades you will see. So everything about this team makes no sense. But if you think they’re going to be bad, and I do, they have no reason to tank because they will be giving up a very high pick to the new to the Atlanta Hawks. So, we must put that into our look, they might just be terrible, not as bad as other teams who have got more incentive, but they are going to be bad. I’m very confident of that. And I’m not convinced that anybody in that front office, at least the two decision makers, have any idea how to build a real real NBA team. I I would love to be proven wrong, but Troy has proven me correct for years and years and years. So, we’ll see. But all of that hangs over this franchise like a gigantic stink. It is one of the biggest turd clouds you will see in professional sports at the moment. In saying that, let’s take a look at their projected rotation for the upcoming season. I am not including Dejonte Mari in this list because he will not be available. He will return at some point. There is some talk of him returning in January. He tore his Achilles at the end of January, start of February around that area. Um, and like he could be back in January, but he also had some outspoken comments about the somewhat, I guess, lack of professionalism of the franchise and training staff, and there seem to be conflict between them. So, I don’t know what his mindset is, but he’s just not going to be there to start the season. We’ll talk about him a little bit more later. This is what I think they’re going to do. And four of these guys, I’m 100% confident they are going to start. Jordan Pool, Herb Jones, Trey Murphy, Zion Williamson, and I think it will be Eve Mei, but I don’t know. It might not be. It might be ready. That’s reference one. An unbelievable like why did you sign Cavon Looney in free agency moment? Maybe it’s Looney, or maybe it’s the guy that you gave away the unprotected first round pick for in the Blizzard himself, Derek Queen. Again, I I just don’t think they know what wins in the NBA or what makes sense with the players they’ve got on the team because every one of those centers makes no sense. None at all. So I I at this point I’ll go with the incumbent Eve Miy who I don’t think is a particularly strong NBA starting center even though he’s only like year two and there’s there is room to improve but I don’t think he’s that good. The rest of the rotation it’s a weird team. Like there’s Jose Alvarado plus the guy they picked at number seven Jeremiah Fears who I think is my prediction first three months to be the worst player in the entire NBA because he’s a rookie point guard who is incredibly young on a bad team who has all the traits to be terrible early on. But how do those two work together? Then you’ve got yeah this guy he’s back the depressed penis Sadi Bay. Troy Weaver brings him from Detroit brings him to Washington for his one-year stop there. Doesn’t play in Washington at all and now brings him to New Orleans. Cool. Thanks, Troy. There is Derek Queen in that group. Jordan Hawkins, who I I’m not sure he’s going to be in the rotation to be honest, but I’ll put him there. The other one is Kavon Looney. You’ll notice that there are two point guards in that fiveman bench group, Alvarado and Fierce. There are two centers in Queen and Looney. That is this team is bad. They have just the structure of this team does not make a lot of sense. And that’s not even including Dejonte Murray into that mix who will come back I’m guessing at some point and yeah there’ll be there’ll be things to discuss and that’s going to impact everybody on this team when he does return again I’ll talk more about Dejonte later on. So what are later on I’ll talk about it now. What are the questions on this team? What are we what are we looking at? What’s one of the major issues with the projections? Well, it is. What happens or or more to the point, when does De does Jonte Murray come back because it changes everything. Now, Murray was who the Pelicans got last season in their trade for Dyson Daniels or when they traded away Dyson Daniels as well as a first round pick in that deal. And Murray started out broke his hand early on, came back to Achilles and in the interim was terrible for the most part. He had a 27 usage. He played 33 minutes. He’s like his headto-head rankings and point six rankings were were okay, but he shot under 30% from three. He was under 40% from the field. He averaged 7 and a half assists with two steals and six and a half rebounds, but his oncourt impact was bad. But those fantasy numbers are pretty good for Dejonte Murray. But I I don’t think with the acquisition of Jordan P, with what this team is doing, with Jeremiah Fears being drafted, with the Jonte coming back from an Achilles and will be rested on backto-backs and have limited minutes for a period of time, I don’t think there’s any real reason to be prioritizing drafting him. If you are in a daily Changes League, holding an IIL slot hostage until January or maybe February will hurt you. Again, if you have the mindset, this goes with if you’re drafting Kyrie or you decide that you think Jason Tatum’s coming back. If you do that, I believe you have to have the mindset that you will say to yourself, as soon as I get into a situation where I need that I slot, I will drop that player, then do it. Draft him with your last pick. Draft Dejonte, draft Kyrie, draft Tatum if you want. Don’t bother with Lil Hallebertton. They are not coming back. Valve is not coming back. again Tatum I don’t really think he is but like if you want to draft Dejonte or Kyrie do it with your last pick but you have I believe have the mindset no matter how many isles you’ve got if you need that spot in a daily Changes league you have to drop that player you don’t want to be in a situation where you’re just holding and holding and playing one man down for a few weeks at a time because you think this guy’s going to come back and be great but you don’t even know when if you’re in a weekly league a game’s cap league, a roto league, which is games cap, then your ability to hold guys on IIL is different because your bench functions more of as a stashable place. So your ability to hold and stash guys in those areas is a lot easier. So that changes the calculus a little bit. What are the other projection questions on this team that we need to look at? Well, I think it’s pretty obvious that Zion Williamson and his health. Zion hurt his hamstring very early in the season. He’s had multiple hamstring injuries. I am it’s not quite the same to me as multiple knee injuries with multiple knee surgeries where I am I don’t think that is recovering because you can recover from multiple hamstring injuries and have some decent run of health. It’s not great though. It is worth noting that Zion played under 30 minutes down the stretch last season and absolutely cooked. He was unbelievably good. It was the best Zion we have ever seen. So, I have a maybe a delusional level of hope in what Zion is going to do this season, but I do understand that there is a lot of risk with his health because honestly, if I didn’t have the repeated health issues, he’d be a first round points league player and a second round category league player without any question to me, but the injury makes me not do that. And of course, when Zion is out, that’s a lot of shots. It probably helps the centers cuz they fit better, but it it means more for Trey. It means more for Herb. It means a lot more for Jordan P. It means we get some depressed penis action, but I don’t think we want to get too into Sadi Bay. Will the Blizzard surpass Eve Missi? Now, Derek Queen is an interesting guy. He’s probably a little undersized as a center. He’s not really a defensive center. His shooting is somewhat of a concern, but he’s a great offensive guy. He’s a good post player. He’s got really good offensive footwork. He’s a solid, strong passer as a big man. But can’t shoot, can’t defend. How the hell does that go with Zion? But they spent up a lot. They obviously believe a lot in Blizzard. So, will Queen get ahead of me? Will he be ahead of Looney? I think there’ll be times when we consider him for fantasy this season, Derek. But there’s no like easy path to big usage and big minutes necessarily. And you one of the questions is going to be like how do they view development? Because like I said, they don’t have a first round pick and they got fears and they got queen. So if they want to develop fears and queen that is going to make them terrible, especially fears, but then they don’t get a pick out of it. So are they giving are they gifting the Hawks a top three pick? It is possible. So do they push those guys away and run out Looney because he’s going to be solid? I don’t know. And then of course Sadiq Bay, like that is a question like could does Baya play 28 minutes returning from the torn ACL? he would need 32 minutes and 20 plus usage for me to even care remotely in standard leagues and I don’t think he gets that. But there’s an impact there because he’s a player who Troy Weaver loves for whatever reason and is an NBA experienced sixthman/starter and that is important. So there’s quite a bit of uncertainty regarding some of the guys on this team. We’ll come back and talk about a little bit more about them in detail. Today’s episode though is brought to you by FanDuel. With the NFL season here, Fanel has an offer that you don’t want to miss. Right now, new customers can bet $5 and you get $300 in bonus bets. If you win, that is right. You place a bet, put that, pick that bet, put five bucks on it, and if it wins, you unlock $300 in bonus bets to use across the app. It is so easy to use the FanDuel app. It’s fun. There’s promotions all the time. You can get these bonus bets. You can test your sporting knowledge against your mates. NFL, NBA, baseball playoffs, NHL, WNBA playoffs. It’s all there on FanDuel. Do your same game parlays, your player props, your totals, your spreads. Do all that stuff and use your $300 bonus bets when you win that first $5 bet. So, what are you waiting for? Go to fanul.com to download the Fanuel app today and to get started. And don’t forget to gamble responsibly. Okay, we are talking about the New Orleans Pelicans and their upcoming season. Let’s take a look at some over and undervalued guys on this uh team based on current like ADP data and ranking data. And and I do despite the concerns on his injury and I’m I’m I understand that some of you are going to be like I do not have any trust in Zion Williamson at all. I understand that. I understand why you would say that. I am not a person. Maybe someone would say that just as a general rule. I’m not a person who is this random freak. But I I am not somebody who’s like, “Oh, he burnt me in the past. Never again.” I think that’s a terrible way of looking at fantasy because you’re just ruling out situations without considering any context around them. Like guy burnt me last year. Oh well, who cares, right? I don’t like you. It’s like holding a personal grudge against somebody who doesn’t know you exist. What’s the point? But I understand that some people will do that. I understand that Zion does not have a strong track record of health. But it is worth mentioning because it will get mentioned, oh, if he ever he’s never going to play 70 games. He has like he has played a full season. I’m not suggesting that means that he will. But I am suggesting that it doesn’t guarantee that he won’t because we’ve seen this happen all the time. Two years ago, Zion played 70 games and played 32 minutes a game in the 23 24 season. Not that long ago, like literally one season ago. He played 30 games last season and that was obviously not great. And he’s had a whole missed season in there as well. But at the moment, we’re talking about a situation where Zion is at like ADP of 50 on Yahoo, 60 on fan tracks. He’s ranked 71st for ESPN categories. For points, he’s at 28. But this is a top 10 per game points league player. This is a top 15 category per game player for head-to-head categories. For Roto, a little bit different, right? His free throws aren’t good. We know that. Might as well just bring the old Zion screen up so you can take a look at some of his stats. He’s not a great free throw shooter, but what he is able to do, the things that Zion Williams said he’s able to do are incredibly valuable. I also don’t think they’re going to keep him at under 29 minutes a game, which is what they did last season. And he was unbelievably valuable. He had 34 usage. He was 14th in points per game, fantasy points per game in 29 minutes. He averaged 25 and seven with over five assists, 1.2 steals, and one block, which was part of the appeal of Zion coming out of Juke. He shot 57 from the field, and that could honestly go higher. Yeah, he doesn’t hit threes. His free throws are bad. I know all this, but points, rebounds, assists, steals, blocks, and field goal percentage is a bloody good six category combination. And in points leagues, he rolled 45 fantasy points in 29 minutes. So, I say all of this to say if you’re looking at Zion at 71 on ESPN or 49 on Yahoo or 60 on fan tracks, I’m good with that. Yes, there is a risk. What if he plays 30 games? What if he plays 65? Then that is that is a league winning type of move. I would not want to pair him with him, then take Kawhai, then I’ll take LaMelo, and I’ll take Embiid. That’s that’s there’s too many risk factors associated with those guys altogether, but Zion is being undervalued. I also think that we’re a little bit under on Herb Jones. And as a general rule, I’m not a big Herb Jones guy for fantasy, for category leagues especially. Well, that’s not true. For points leagues, he’s not as good. He’s like a top 140 guy. You don’t need to worry that much about Herb in category leagues. But in Yeah, sorry. in points leagues. In category leagues, there has been times where Herb has been incredibly overvalued. You know, the nine cat algorithm. Well, he’s got.5 turnovers. Therefore, he’s the top 40 player. Not really. But now, he sits at a rank of 147. He’s got an ADP of 140 on ESPN. Now, he’s ranked at 103 on ESPN categories, which is about right. He’s a good steals guy. He’s improved his free throws and he’s shooting a lot. Um, blocks shots out of position. Not a bad rebounder. I’m not sure if there’s evolution in usage for Herb Jones, but at the moment, like where he sits at 147 on on Yahoo and 155 on fan tracks, like that’s suggesting that people just won’t draft him, which is silly. Yeah, he missed a lot of time last season, but also don’t care. Who who cares? He will be back. He is healthy. He will start. So, to me, he’s just being sort of disregarded a little bit. And in the past, I have not been a Herb Jones guy, but to me, that’s just too low. Want to look at some undervalued guys. I’m going to go to the guy that’s so often compared with or pair or paired with in discussions with Herb Jones, and that’s Trey Murphy. They came into the league about the same time. They play similar positions, different games, obviously. Now, Trey is someone that I’ve heard some hyperbolic statements about Trey Murphy this season. I love Trey Murphy in the draft. I liked him a lot as a rookie. I liked him last season a lot. Often at times the pendulum of hype, which is a great name for a band or a fantasy team, swings too far for me. I’ve heard people say that Trey Murphy is the Pelican’s best player. And I’m like, don’t about that. That that seems a little bit too much to me. I I I don’t agree with that, like at all. But the Trey is good. Like, don’t get me wrong, I really like Trey, but for example, he’s ranked at 37 for Yahoo. Okay. in category leagues. I can understand why you might consider that. But also, we have seen when the team is relatively like complete that Trace sometimes struggles to do enough. Sure, when players are out, he’ll play 37 minutes and he’ll have big usage and he will score really well. Like last season, he was 29th in category leagues per game. He played 35 minutes a night before he hurt his shoulder. He was 55th though in points leagues and that is with him playing basically all of those games without Zion. Remember he got hurt and then Zion came back and did his damage. So will Trey maintain 23 usage? Will he play 35 minutes? He could. But even in that scenario, which you might consider is almost ideal, he was not a top 50 points league guy. He averaged 21, five, and three, which these are all good numbers. And his shooting numbers did dip a little bit and if he’s playing with Zion, that can come up. But if you’re looking at him as a third round guy, which a rank of 37 is about that area, there’s no real evidence to suggest that’s what he he’ll be able to do. Now, of course, Trey Murphy’s ADP on ESPN for for God knows what reason is 113. Like, you can figure that out then. I I don’t know that that makes no sense, right? That that is craziness to me. To me, for a category, he’s around a 50th mark. That’s fine. Go into the 40s if you want to. no problem. But for points leagues, he is overvalued, especially for Yahoo. And while LA, two years ago, I was incredibly wrong about Jordan Pool. Last season I was like, let’s get back onto the pool bandwagon. I was right on Jordan P. This season, I’m a little bit I’m a little bit all over the place. Pool is going to start. I’m I’m guessing. The worry there is that Dejonte returns and he pushes P to the side. Someone left a comment on one of my videos saying Jordan Pool’s never going to come off the bench. I don’t think that’s true. He came off the bench for the Wizards two years ago and he played his entire career in gold state basically off the bench. Um I would also make the argument and don’t tell anyone this. I I wouldn’t I wouldn’t say it’s crazy that Jordan P is a better player than Dejonte Murray at times. I know that Jordan Pool gets a lot of hate, a lot of hate. But I don’t I think that there is a weird narrative around him that doesn’t 100% reflect reality. Paul was 53rd last season, 77th in points leagues. He had 30 usage, but also he played only 29 minutes. And I would expect that he plays more than that for New Orleans, but he was only 77th in points leagues. So P sits with a ESPN category rank or ESPN or Yahoo ranking of 69. Giggity an ESPN points ranking of 65. And I think that that’s a little high. I think he’s in the 80s for points leagues and he might beat the number early, but it might fade away a little bit when Deontto returns. Now, of course, a lot can change. What if Dejantto returns and then Zion and Trey are both out and then he’s still doing what he does? I get it, but there’s not like if you’re taking him at 60, he needs to be much better than he was last season in a points league for that to really register. Ky Le is different story, right? I’m very strong with taking Jordan P in the like 50s, 60s. That’s fine. I’m okay with that. And he’ll probably be a top 50 guy early in the year and might fade back a little bit. He shot 38 from three last season. Again, there’s an idea that he’s this terrible three-point shooter. He just chucks up shots like 38’s very good. His free throws have been elite for a long time. His steals are actually up last season. I’m a bit skeptical on those, but he’s someone again that I think there’s a little bit of bias against Jordan P for some stuff that we have seen obviously, but I think that his season last season was actually quite mature and significantly improved and we’ll see what they do with him this season, but yeah, he’s a a tough one in a points league given where he’s positioned, but in category leagues, I’m I’m in on it. We come back and talk about breakouts and injuries and new arrivals, all that stuff. Today’s episode though is brought to you by Palaton. 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Explore the new Palaton Crossraining Tread Plus today at onepalon.com. Okay, so we are talking New Orleans Pelicans here and their season ahead and some of the decisions and pitfalls regarding drafting their guys in terms of looking at guys with star upside. And by that I clarified it’s just top 50. It’s Zion, it’s Trey Murphy, and it’s Jordan Pool. The three guys that I’ve just spoken about. I’m very comfortable with Trey Trey Murphy in round four. I’m very comfortable round. Let me give numbers here. For points, he is going to be well below his category number. So, if you’re in a category league, if you want to take Trey in the 40s, go for it. But points, I look 50s, 60s. Pool, similarly, if you want to take him in the 50s or 60s for categories and 80s for points, I’m okay with it. And then there’s Zion, who is a first round points league player and a second round category league player if there were no injuries. So, if you’re in a points league and you wanted to take a flyer on Zion in round four, absolutely do it. If you’re in a category league in round four and probably more round five, I’m I’m good with doing that depending on how your team looks because there’s obviously risk with the recurrent hamstring problems, but there is a huge payoff with Zion. And that is again, it’s a decision you make of how much risk you want to take on. Who else has or who has arrived onto this team? We’ve talked about the Blizzard already, Derek Queen. I look, if we see that he is ahead of Mei and Looney in preseason and he’s fine with his wrist injury, if you want to take him as a light round flyer, which I did the video on that earlier today, go for it. I don’t think that as a rookie big man with other guys around him and a questionable fit that it’s going to make much. He’s not going to be awesome for for most leagues, but we consider it. Sadique Bay arrives, hasn’t played in a year. He needs he’s one of these guys. Um he’s very Calvin Johnsony where he plays that forward position. He give him 34 minutes and 25 usage and he might be the hundth best player, but it’s just not likely to happen unless multiple injuries happen. Jeremiah Fears was their number seven overall pick and you would think that with a number seven overall pick, you’d find ways to be able to prioritize using and developing him, but of course they won’t because they do have Dejonte Maria returning. They traded for Jordan Pool and they don’t have a draft pick to allow a guy who I think is going to be the worst player in the NBA a lot of development minutes and Jose Alvarado is still there. fears his numbers in summer league outlies some of the the concerns. Summer league doesn’t translate everything across obviously but also in college he could not shoot threes and he hit 18% in summer league he averaged 17 points with two and a half assists. Now, the assist numbers, don’t worry about it. Doesn’t matter. In summer league, it’s hard to get assists cuz a lot of your teammates are terrible. He had 31 usage. That is part of what his game was at Oklahoma as well, but that’s not possible playing on this team with pools on Murphy. He’s not going to get to do that. He’s a good free throw shooter, although that was bad in summer league as well. I just Yeah, he arrives. They have invested him. He’s very fast. His ability to attack the paint is impressive, but I think defensively he’s going to be terrible. I think the shooting is going to be really bad and he is going to struggle immensely. He is very young. I think he might be the second or third youngest player in the entire draft. And that just is an impossible task for a point guard. He will he will suck and if he doesn’t that is a huge win for for him and for the Pelicans, but I think he’s going to be terrible. So I would not really consider drafting him. They also, for what reason, I don’t know, brought over Cavon Looney to take minutes from their first round pick last season or take minutes from their first round pick this season in Derek Queen and Eve Missy. Like, all right. Or their second round pick from a few years ago who showed some things last season in Carlo Makovic who’s just never going to play now. I don’t get it. And also, oh, pay looney well above market rates at 6 million a year. Cool. That that makes that’s that’s a pretty smart move. Can Looney play 28 minutes? Will they want him to? Will you care? And the answer to all those things is can he? I don’t know. Will they? Don’t think so. And will you care? Absolutely not. If he does start, he could just be the new Harrison Barnes or even he could be the new Eve Mi, the starting center who you just don’t care about for fantasy. And that’s exactly what Messi was last season. Mah Peavey also came across in the second round of the um of the draft. don’t expect that he is going to do anything for this upcoming season, but which shouldn’t be a controversial idea. Um, I don’t think there’s anybody else that we need to really consider on this team. Although, I realized that my second new arrival screen doesn’t have the names on it that it should. So, I’m just going to have to freestyle it because um there are four other names, but for some reason it just didn’t it didn’t update across as it needed to. But, we’re talking about guys that really aren’t going to play much. Detroit Trey Alexander came across who’s someone I sort of like to develop into a rotation player at some point. Bryce McGowens, Jaden Springer, and Troy Wea special, Hunter Dickinson, who I’m very convinced is not an NBA player. But these guys are not going to play until we get to if injuries strike and whatever they’re doing in March and April, we might get silly season from some of those guys. And the guys that I would Dickinson can put up numbers, I just think he’s going to be bad. Uh Alexander would be a somewhat interesting player to at least keep tabs on. I say this with all due skepticism, but the the one guy in this team who could take a step forward, who could really improve on what I think he’s going to do is Eve Messi. I don’t think he will. But when I’m scouring this roster, like who’s got the potential to do that, it’s probably only him. Now, Mei started, I think nearly every game last season as a rookie, as a late first round pick. He or he started 67 out of 73 games. He played 27 minutes a night. The fit with him and Zion is horrendous. It’s really bad. And we saw down the stretch that his minutes were getting reduced. When Zion was playing, he’d play like 24 minutes or 23 minutes. He averaged 9 and eight with 1.3 blocks on 55%. Now, if you’re giving me not much else, I need 1.7 blocks. I need 60% shooting. He just wasn’t useful really at all. But what if he becomes a 60% shooter, averages 1.7 blocks, and gives you a 12 and 10 double double? Again, don’t think it’s possible, especially after bringing in Derek Queen and Kavon Looney. But if I had to stretch it to anyone who could maybe break out, maybe it is Messi. I think his offensive game really struggles. He’s got no range at all to his shooting. Defensively, he’s pretty good, but it hasn’t resulted in big block numbers. Now, he is sort of relatively new to the game of basketball, but overall, he’s a little stiff, and I just want him on any other team apart from pairing him with Zion Williamson. We got a few injuries to monitor with this team. Zion was healthy at the end of last season. He missed the last games, the tanking games, but we had the multiple hamstring injuries. So, I’m sure you’re aware that Zion has injury problems. Trey Murphy and Herb Jones both had shoulder issues last season. It looks like they’re going to both be fine for opening night, so that’s a huge W. We weren’t sure about Trey, but it looks like he’s fine. Deontto Murray’s Achilles January February return. Maybe it’s Christmas, but again, when he comes back, it’ll be limited minutes, backto-backs off all season, I would guess. plus pool, fears, Alvarado, all exist. So, I would find it tough to consider Murray a draftable guy. And the last one there is Derek Queen, the Blizzard. He hurt his wrist in summer league. He um yeah, again, it’s just hard to find that easy pathway and fit to get enough playing time to be useful for most of us. Now, I’ve sort of held this back a little bit on this team, but it is worth noting that with all this stuff that I’ve said, there is a bad playoff week mixed in here. They got 15 back to backs which again don’t matter that much because they got 15 but the lowest team has 13. Who cares about two? Doesn’t matter. But they have a twoame playoff week and that is the week that begins March the 9th. So in the recommended playoffs that I suggest that is semi-final week. Semi-final week. It is the week before Yahoo playoffs start. Yahoo default starts. So it might not matter. But if I am making a decision in a league with playoffs, a head-to-head league with playoffs, it would weigh on my call on Trey and on Zion. But these are not players that you’re picking in round one or round two and in most cases round three. And that is usually where I’m going to focus on two game playoff week players and where I would make decisions to not take them. Now Zion is a first round upside guy. So, if I am taking him in round four, pairing that with the injury risk, I don’t love that idea that he’s only got two games. But again, the fact that I think I’m getting him outside the top 50 in a lot of spots, Zion sort of nullifies that risk associated with it. Like Zion, for example, is going at ADP 49, meaning that you can that’s an average. You can get him outside the top 50. And even if he is a first round guy, if I’ve spent my fifth pick on him or my sixth pick on him and he plays two games in my semi-final and maybe he gives me 90 fantasy points, okay, who else was I taking in round five or six that is giving me like, yeah, I could find someone with a three game week that gives me 90 that have 30 points a game. That’s in that area. That’s okay. But also Zion would have outpaced them by a significant amount during the season, but it is not without consequence that twoame week. It’s not something that you can ignore. It is it is important. And that’s the Pelicans. We just have a bit of a run through with it. Zion again, first round upside, but too many risk factors. Round four, round five, round six. Trey Murphy perhaps overrated in some spots. Although the ESPN ADP at 113 makes zero sense, but yeah, if he’s a round four guy or round six for points leagues, I get it. Jordan P’s probably around 67 guy who is probably going to taper a little bit as the season goes on. Herb Jones, really good value towards the end of drafts. Deonte, it’s got to be a stashable format to draft him. And then like Mei and Queen and Bay and Fears and Looney. We’re talking deeper league stuff for these guys. You can take a flyer on Messi in a 12 and see what happens. You might really believe in Queen that he’s going to get the starting spot and take him in the last rounds. Again, they’re throwaway picks and if you truly believe that it’s he’s going to get 28 minutes, you take the chance or not. I don’t believe it, but you might. And we can all be right or wrong in different areas. So that’s where you try that stuff out. And it’s hard to be critical of those sort of decisions. Don’t forget locked on fantasy basketball bowl linkree/fb bowl qr on the on the screen links in the description as well as the links for the FBI Fantasy World Cup. So join those up. Hit the subscribe button if you are on YouTube and on audio. Thumb it up. Leave your comments down below. And remember the hype. If you’re on the YouTube mobile app, scroll across on the comments section, find the hype button, and bang it. Guys, we are done here. Thank you so much for listening everyone. Say you

NBA Fantasy Basketball: Can you trust Zion Williamson as a fantasy star? The New Orleans Pelicans enter the 2025-26 season with major questions. Zion’s health remains the biggest factor, while Trey Murphy and Jordan Poole could emerge as key draft values.

Josh Lloyd breaks down the Pelicans’ projected rotation, player outlooks, and draft strategies. With Dejounte Murray sidelined until the second half of the season and a front office making questionable decisions, fantasy managers must weigh upside against risk.

From Zion’s volatile draft stock to sleeper potential in Murphy and Poole, Josh gives you the insights you need to decide if the Pelicans can help — or hurt — your fantasy team.

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0:00 Introduction
0:35 Pelicans team overview
4:11 Projected rotation
7:17 Dejounte Murray’s return
9:50 Zion Williamson’s health
13:30 Over and undervalued players
24:00 Star potential and new arrivals
30:36 Injury concerns
31:37 Playoff schedule impact
34:43 Conclusion and outro