The New Orleans Pelicans Are a Disaster | Zion Williamson Experiment Has FAILED | James Skrmetta

The New Orleans Pelicans Are a Disaster | Zion Williamson Experiment Has FAILED | James Skrmetta

New Orleans Pelicans are 0 and4 and in a few hours I’m sure they’ll be 0 and5. They are on a West Coast road trip taking on the Los Angeles Clippers tonight. I’m filming this on Halloween. I wanted to talk about the Pel start the season, what the hell is going on and what should go on. So I went to the first Pelicans game uh at home. Not the first one in Memphis, but the first one in the Smoothie King Center in the blender. Went to see Wimi and uh take on the Pells. And I I’ll tell you this game was a blast. Lot of fun. A lot of good energy in there. It was good to see the team play different for the last couple years. The team has played the exact same way. It was kind of a slow plotting team. You know, Jonas, Brandon Ingram, Larry Nance, Naji, like even Dyson Daniel. Some of those guys are just kind of slower paced kind of a plotting u kind of strategy when it comes to the offense, especially when Zion’s in there, whatever. But now totally different like having feeders and queen and having more shooters like Jordan Pool out there and uh you know Trey and Herb have kind of Trey is a dynamic player in his own right. He’s not playing great right now but still and the team felt more fun. They felt more fun to watch and that game was a game where the Pells went to overtime lost but it’s the Spurs right? It’s Wimi. Good team you lose in overtime. It is what it is. Well, since then, the wheels have fallen off, ladies and gentlemen. Since then, the Pills have suffered uh losses of over 30 points and 40 points in back-to-back games. The writing is on the wall that Willie Green is going to get fired. Whether he’s fired in the next 48 hours or 72 hours or a week, doesn’t really matter, but he’s getting fired. And the Pelicans are entering a pretty obvious turning of of of the page. And that page is the Zion Williamson experiment. Okay. So this season when Jojo Mars rolled up in here, he was immediately he had to make one decision right off the bat. And that decision was is this a team built around Zion or not? And the gamble was yes. And I think I can’t prove this, but I think the plan was we will see what he can do with a new cast of characters around him. We’ll see what he can do. If the team catches lightning in a bottle, starts off hot, whatever, we’ll ride the wave. If not, we’re going to blow it up. The reason I say that is because of the trade to get Derrick Queen. trading your unprotected first round pick for a team that was just horrific the year before and you look around at the roster and there’s no reason to think they’d be that much better, right? Is insane. Unless you believe you have a parachute to get back into the lottery. I believe the Pels believe that’s what they’re going to do if they are bad enough, which at this point right now, you can see behind me, they are that bad. currently the worst net rating in the NBA, which isn’t hard when you’re getting beat by 30 or 40. When you are as bad as the Pels, and if they keep going on this track, you trade Zion, you get first back, you get back into the top part of the draft, and you do a full rebuild around this super young core. And that young core is Feders, Queen, Herb, Murphy, Mei. We’ll see what Dejant I mean, you know, it’s hard to throw Jonte in there. He’s not on the court right now, but he’s involved as well. Okay, that has to be the plan. The Zion thing ain’t working, has never worked, and it ain’t going to work. We are trying to copy and paste the same strategy seven years in a row now. That strategy is just built on Zion being this transformational player. Zion reminds me a lot of in the NFL like the Wildcat offense or whatever where it looked like it was going to completely take over the league for about eight months and then it just kind of faded out of favor and then the league moved on and it just never was a thing again. When you look at the NBA and you look at how teams are winning and then you look at what the Pels are trying to do, in what world is that going to work, when you have Wimi, when you have Joic, when you have Giannis at the peak of his powers, when you have all that happening, in what world is Zion at 69, him just crashing crashing through the hoop trying to finish and or get fouled. How is that? How is that the plan? Because you see what happens whenever we play someone like Jokic, whenever we play someone like Wimi or Embiid when he was healthy. If there is a dominant big man, we are cooked. Especially right now because right now this team is incredibly small, even our big guys. Okay, even me 611 235. All right. Uh what else we got? We got Carlo Makovich. Uh we got Hunter Dickinson. We went and got DeAndre Jordan. We are incredibly thin, literally and figuratively down low. And that’s because Zion is supposed to be that guy. Okay. 66, 280, 69, whatever you think he is. Let’s say six. Let’s say 67. 66. Who Who knows, right? Wim is either 74 or 77. I don’t know how the NBA can’t have correct heights. You hear different heights all the time, but this experiment just isn’t going to work. And and I mean really all Zion is is an incredibly limited point guard. Limited to the point of doesn’t have a shot, doesn’t want to try and shoot, can’t shoot. Not part of his game. His game is one thing and one thing only, driving to the basket. And the rest is we just we just hope it works. So, I think that’s pretty obvious that’s how this team is going to operate. They’re going to do what they can to move off of him, see what they can get back. Because if they don’t, if they Now, here’s the deal. The remaining years of Zion’s contract are not guaranteed because of time he previously missed that triggered a clause where now it’s not guaranteed. So he can walk whether it’s his decision, the team’s decision, however you want to phrase it, he can walk and the team can move off of him at any time, which they have to. All right? In order to move forward. So you got to get something for them now. You’ve got to get something for them because if they do not and that pick is a first overall pick, second overall pick, third overall pick, fourth overall pick, fifth overall pick, and you just traded it away and then Zion and then you move off of them. So you don’t get anything for Zion. Oh, and you traded away an unprotected first for arguably the worst team in the NBA. That is front office malpractice to the highest possible degree. It’s such a it’s such a hor horrible thing to even like imagine that’s the plan that I won’t even allow it to be the plan. I have to believe that Dumar is thinking what I’m thinking of, well, we don’t have a first now, but we have builtin firsts with Zion once we trade him. That has to be the plan because it kind of makes sense, right? If you’re good enough to where you don’t want to trade Zion because the team’s winning, team’s working, whatever, then the pick is not worth anything, the pick the pick doesn’t matter. And if you’re bad enough for the pick to matter, then you trade Zion. Okay, that makes sense. That makes sense, right? That makes sense. Now, what do you do with coach? Okay, so if Willie gets fired the next couple of days or whatever, and I want to get this video out before the Clippers game, Mike Malone is the first guy that’s going to come to mind. Now, from what I’m hearing, they’re not going to go that route and they’re going to let this thing play out for the season and then they’ll go from there. So, then all of a sudden, you think, all right, well, does that mean they would go to the college ranks? Would they go try and get like Nate Oats? All right, Todd Golden. Those are just a couple of I mean, you know, I don’t even know if they want to coach in the NBA. They may be happy in college. Golden just won a national championship. Like, they may want to stay. Oats has Alabama as a perennial like Final Four Elite 8 team. Totally different NBA college. It’s not the same as college football in NFL, but do they try and do that? Do they try and strike, you know, get the next young guy? Do they try and go that route? Or do they get a retread NBA coach like Mike Mullen, which I I think be great. This team is so dysfunctional from the front office to the organization to the infrastructure to the training, whatever. They might just need an adult in the room. They may just need an NBA coach to show them how to do it. They may just need someone to be like, “Hey guys, this is kind of how we operate. This is how you need to operate.” Malone being a guy who is a nononsense guy. Malone being a guy who just won the finals, he understands what an organization needs to win at that level, I’d be all for. That is exactly what this team needs. Exactly what it needs. And you know, I mean, it’s crazy how we’re four games in and it’s just the exact same thing from last year. The exact same thing as the year before that, the exact same thing as the year before that. I mean, people forget this is a seven-year thing we’ve been going through. Zion is in his seventh season. If Zion finishes this season, he will have played for the Pelicans longer than Andrew Luck’s entire NFL career. That’s crazy. It does not seem that long ago we were taking the Suns to the brink in in the in the six game series where Chris Paul goes whatever it was 16 for 16. I was there. He goes 16 for 16 and and breaks our hearts. All right. It doesn’t seem that long ago. It seems like this is still a young team. I still remember the Jose Alvarado chance and Larry Nance and and all of that. It’s a long time. It’s a long time this team has been doing the exact same thing. And at this point is borderline getting to the insanity world where we’re doing the exact same thing and getting the exact same results. So, it’s just time. It’s time to move on from Willie. It’s time to move on from Zion. Turn the page. Start the new chapter. You got to get picks. Hit the lottery. And then you build with Fears, Murphy, Jones, Mei, Pool, Queen, De Jante. You build with those guys and whoever you draft and you go from there. Go get a coach, go get Malone, go get a young coach, start a new. But damn, it is embarrassing. I mean, it is embarrassing doing this every single year. And it’s the same way we’re losing, too. The same way. Game’s pretty close until the third quarter. Oop, lol. Now it’s 30-point game. Wow, we’re only down seven with nine minutes. Oh, we lost by 40. Same exact thing. Go into halftime, down two. Start on a 0 and 12 run. Now we’re down 14. Okay, cool. We’re never within 10. That’s exactly how it was last year. It’s exactly how it was the year before. Exactly the same. So, it is what it is. They tried something for a crazy long time. I know as a Pelicans fan who has watched a ridiculous amount of this team over the last five years, it’s time to see something new. It didn’t work. It never worked. It’s not going to work. the league is isn’t gonna drastically change to the point to where all of a sudden this works. We also need Trey and Herb to be way better. They are the cornerstones of this team. They are the the young core personified. Trey Murphy has to take a step and be the most improved player in the NBA. He needs to be that guy. He can’t just be a guy who comes in, knocks down a couple threes, calls it a day. Herb can’t just be a guy who plays good defense. He can’t have zeros on the on the stat sheet. He’s got to have some offensive game to him. He can’t be a worse version of Dyson Daniel. He has to take a step. Mei’s been good or he was good last year. He’s still, you know, still second year. We’ll see. I like what I’m seeing out of Fears. I like what I’m seeing out of Queen. I like what I’m seeing out of Jordan Pool. I think they all add something. I’m excited to see Deontay back. But, you know, I I don’t blame Dumar’s for giving this the good old college try and say, “Let’s roll Zion out there with these new group of guys. Let’s see if they can get hot. Go nuts. Buy us some time.” But not only is it not working, it’s it’s it’s comically failing. 30 point loss, 40 point loss. If tonight against LA, you know, is another comedic loss, I mean, how do you not how do you not start making plans? It’s tough, man. I tell you what, going to the Pelicans game on Friday, then the Saints game on Sunday, being a Saints and Pelicans fan, the name for the week. And I’m I’m, you know, I’m I’m two lane, not LSU, never claimed to be. But for the LSU Pelicans, Saints fans, may God have mercy on your soul. What a horrible se. What a horrible year. LSU football, New Orleans Saints football, Pelicans basketball. Good God almighty. All right, ladies and gentlemen. Happy Halloween. Get on down in the comments below and I will see you in the next

The New Orleans Pelicans are off to a DISASTROUS start to the NBA season and James Skrmetta is sounding the alarm. After starting 0-4 with multiple blowout losses by 30 and even 40 points, it’s time to ask the hard questions: Is this the end of the Zion Williamson era? Has head coach Willie Green lost the locker room? In this video, James breaks down everything wrong with the Pelicans — from Zion’s effort and conditioning to the team’s culture, roster construction, and front-office decisions.

👉 Should the Pelicans finally move on from Zion Williamson?
👉 Is Willie Green’s time in New Orleans officially over?

James Skrmetta dives deep into the Pelicans’ early-season meltdown and what has to change before it’s too late. If you’re a Pelicans fan or just love NBA drama, this is a can’t-miss discussion.

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