Why the Pelicans “curse” is worse than you think

Why the Pelicans “curse” is worse than you think

The Pelicans are so trash. Even their commentators are over it all. No, he’s gonna hit it just because he’s down this year. Dort again. Give me a break. And I don’t blame them. In this racing game, the Thunder made quick work of the Pelicans. Isaiah Joe clean look. What else is new? It’ll be Mitchell and he’s going to get it like everything else. A 25-point game after the first quarter. Yeah, this game’s over. Now, they also played a Grizzlies team that they were up 10 in the fourth quarter, but the Grizzlies quickly came back. What else is new? Now, kudos to Zion hits a clutch shot to tie it, but in overtime, they just didn’t have the juice and the Pelicans, they would lose again. One of the worst situations in the NBA is just keeps getting worse. Their coach is already fired. They’re dead last in the Western Conference. It almost feels like this team is missing a lot of key players that they had years ago, like Tyson Daniels, for example. Yeah, let’s talk about him. Because you know when he was in Atlanta, he had a breakout season as soon as he got traded from the Pelicans and it’s actually so much worse than that. Dyson Daniels himself when talking about his time in the Pelicans, he said, quote, “The organization’s cursed.” Unquote. He continues, quote, “Every year there’s something new. I’m happy I’m not there anymore.” Unquote. Look, people ran with this narrative. They were talking about how the stadium might have been built over a burial site or whatnot. Now, this stadium is in clear need of renovation. A lot of Pelican friends fans will even tell you that it’s not up to par with all the other high class stadiums in the league. They’ve had playoff games in this stadium in recent years. Still, man, it still feels like this this place is cursed somehow that you know players that come in and out of this organization. They’re better off not being here. Jake Fixure asks him because of the curse. In which Dyson responds, “Yeah, the curse, man. I had like four or five ankle injuries down there as well. There’s something down in that water down there or something. They got hamstrings, they got knees, they got concussions and stuff as well. They got everything down there. I don’t know what it is. Playing hard, I guess. Now, you could tell by the way Daniels was talking in that quote. It was all tug and cheek, right? It’s more serious answer. And I quote, I don’t point fingers at anyone. I blame myself. I wasn’t consistent in my first two years. I was up and down. I had great games and I had really bad games. I didn’t find that consistency. And we had a lot of players in New Orleans. A lot of the, you know, cursed narratives also stems from a lot of racist tropes attributed to the African ancestry that, you know, got taken to America to be enslaved, practicing voodoo. And that’s something that does need to be pointed out because that’s just one of the many, you know, quote unquote supernatural forces that people claim is holding back New Orleans. And quite frankly, the red herrings and we know this to be the case. And it’s intentionally designed to ignore the real problems. I think we saw from this year’s draft that the scouting in New Orleans is not the problem. You can in fact argue they got lucky with how the lottery balls bounced their way multiple times during their history. All coming at the most desperate times in their franchise’s history, too. Very early on, they had some great years with Chris Paul as their franchise cornerstone. People don’t talk about that 2008 breakout season Chris Paul had, right? He’s an MVP talks. And worse yet, people don’t talk about his 2009 season, which you could argue was his peak season athletically. I don’t think people realize Chris Paul was jumping, bro. Like that guy had a oops, man. He had hops. And not many knew about this Chris Paul early in his career during the 2009 2010 season. Early on, Chris Paul having a very, very bad knee injury. But that first injury only kept him out for like two weeks, right? He came back on the floor around December of 2009. But in a game against the Bulls, you know, Chris Paul would end up tearing his miniscus when going for a chase down block, which made it so that he had to miss a good chunk of the season. He came back in March, but he clearly was not the same, right? Not performing nearly as well as he did earlier in the season. And for a guy that was attempting most of his shots at the rim in the 2008 2009 season, you can see here the following season, the frequency at the rim was much lesser than it was. And it would just get worse and worse in terms of his frequency at the rim. Chris Paul had to change his game forever for that reason. And at that point when I left, it wasn’t like I’m leaving New Orleans cuz I want to be out of here. Like the team was saying that they were moving and going to do this and going in all these other different different directions. So that’s why me and D West was like, “Okay, it’s time for us to to move on.” Like was Chris Paul years later talking about, you know, how the fallout in New Orleans, it wasn’t that he wanted out of New Orleans cuz he hated the city. It was more so that he seen a lot of the dysfunction in New Orleans where after years of, you know, making the playoffs, there were multiple things that contributed to the franchise’s downturn in the late 2000s to where now in the early 2010s, right, during the 2011 season, and they make the playoffs and they actually win two games that many people didn’t see them winning against the defending championship Lakers team. But again, the very next year after losing in the first round, they don’t even make the playoffs altogether and they only win 21 games. And so it makes sense for Chris Paul. He’s looking at this and how the league office is handling the Pelicans and he’s like, “Yeah, I should leave this place, right?” And yeah, the league office owned the Pelicans, right, with David Stern running it as commissioner. And we all know of some of the things that happened leading up to Chris Paul leading the Pelicans that were quite controversial. One of the earliest WO bombs we had seen at the time. Of course, this was before the shorten season, right? Had started in December. The trade was announced online. Paul Gasaw was going to be involved. Lamar ODM would going to be moved. More pieces like Luis Kola from Houston. Gorand Drag as well would be moved and Chris Paul would make way in the Lakers uniform. And for those thinking that’s just a lot for the Lakers to give up, where’s your front court at that point? Right. They were also going to dangle Andrew Bayham in a trade package to get Dwight Howard later on to really shore up that team. That is until the NBA decided to veto the trade. Some people argue it was a mistake for Stern to even do that in the first place. He shouldn’t have been in a position to even make a call like this. But it was obvious the NBA did not want to give the Lakers uh too much of an advantage here. It was a lot of the owners in the NBA that was actually pressuring David Stern to veto this, right? And this whole chapter, I think, proves, you know, one of the points I will I will reiterate in this video that it’s not so much that the franchise is cursed. It’s that quite frankly, they’re inept. It’s incompetence more so that’s the cause of a lot of the problems this franchise is having. Now, fortunately for Chris Paul, uh he didn’t have to play out the rest of the season in New Orleans as that very same week, 6 days later, he was moved to the Clippers, the the the the next door neighbor to the Lakers. Oh, wow. And the package was even more underwhelming than the Lakers package where, you know, they would get Alfa Rukaminu, Eric Gordon, Chris Cayman, and the 2012 first round pick from Minnesota, which would turn to Austin Rivers. So, in the end, the NBA league office ended up shooting themselves in the foot with this trade as they refused a better offer to to get a worse one. And now, of course, they did get lucky with Anthony Davis, right? just as they did when it was AD’s turn to be disgruntled and was making clear hints to the front office in New Orleans that he wanted out. It was one of those things he didn’t want to play out the rest of his contract in New Orleans and was making a clear effort to try to get himself to a better situation uh to contend or win the title. And in that trade, they end up trading Anthony Davis to the Lakers and they get Alonzo, Brennan Ingram, Josh Hart. And again, you look at those picks that they got. The scouting right department actually nailed some of these picks here. DeAndre Hunter, Dyson Daniels, the Drake Pile pick was made by Brooklyn after that pick ended up being traded to them. This one comment on Instagram points out here. Very good comment by the way. Trade was great until New Orleans traded everybody. Yeah. Not a single individual involved in this trade is currently employed by the Pelicans. And as is part of the script, apparently all these players end up looking better outside of New Orleans. Anyway, it’s always funny to talk about some of these teams, right? Because they always seem to make you believe that, yeah, it’s it’s just a cursed franchise. It doesn’t matter what they do, bro. Like, everybody that they draft or trade for once they leave New Orleans, bet they’re over on them, bro. At this point, just bet that they’ll have a better time elsewhere. And that’s certainly what happened to Chris Paul as well when he was on the Clippers. He had some of his best years. And I mean the very next year AD ended up winning a championship having the best playoff run of his career to this day. And now when we get to the present moment with Joel Dumour is now at the helm in New Orleans. This is where, in my opinion, the things that cause New Orleans Pelicans and even the Saints for that matter, because we’re going to get into them too, to be incompetent and just quite frankly horrible franchises, those very causes are ever more present when Joe Demarz ends up hiring Tro Weaver, who was dismissed after making some of the moves being behind a team that uh quite frankly was in the middle of a such a crazy losing stretch. We all know they overpaid for Molly Williams, a coach that didn’t seem like he even wanted to be there in the first place. And it seems like he just took the money, man, and he’s just like, “You know what, bro? I’m I’m going to do the bare minimum.” And he’s better to make all this money whilst coaching a high school team that his son plays in. Well, the Pistons, they decided to be serious hiring uh Troan here from the Pelicans. There’s a lot of connections here that I’m seeing between these two franchises. So, yeah, they did this month after cutting ties with Tro Weaver. the Pelicans hiring Joel Dum who was part of the Pistons and oh he was taking it up in the last six years there and he got dismissed for that reason in one of the last games of the season he would have a fan ejected for telling him the truth to his face and boy this was May 2024 bro if I fast forward to what November 2025 the Pistons right now are number one in the Eastern Conference uh they were on a 12game winning streak I think 13 even before the Celtics, you know, recently beat them and the Pelicans are dead last in the Western Conference with almost the opposite record as the Pistons. It’s actually funny like the turnaround from that season to now two seasons later. These guys already have more wins this season than they had the whole season that year and it’s only been 17 to 18 games and we’re in November. We’re still in November, bro. Like, this is ridiculous. What did the Pelicans do? It feels like the Pelicans, they looked at what the Pistons did over there the last couple of years and and they were like, “Hey man, we know that guy Monty was coaching them. Hey man, maybe maybe they got something there. I think they’re doing some great stuff. Let’s hire those people. Let’s get those people involved.” And it’s like Dyson Daniels was not serious when he, you know, in tongue and cheek said it was a cursed franchise, but honestly, people actually took it seriously when in fact the real issues were being ignored outright. and you know the owners which of course we’re also seeing you know New Orleans counterpart franchise was owned by the same owner right Gail Benson at the moment where for years right things that were going wrong in this in the Saints organization well you’d see them not only go wrong in the Pelicans organization but even to some extent the Pelicans organization would do things that you know despite seeing what the Saints were doing would just ignore them and the more and more I research this topic the more and more research this franchise, the Pelicans, the more I realize a lot of the stories we’re seeing this year are some of the same stories we’ve seen years before. From this Ringer article that I referenced a couple minutes ago, this is a timeline of things that happened, right? Brandon Ingram apparently sends a cryptic message. Cannot stay in environments where people don’t know the true value of you. August 30th, 2024, Brennon Ingram decides to send this story out uh to the press, to the world, and people noticed it. It’s clear he was sending a message at the top brass in New Orleans that, you know, they weren’t valuing him like they should have. Some people read this as Brenon Ingram thinks of himself as an all-star, but really he’s he’s a mid player that always gets hurt. I mean, he shouldn’t talk. But again, it’s not just him that got hurt. Even Murphy, Trey Murphy that season suffering a preseason hamstring injury. Then DeJonte Murray who got traded right in the Dyson Daniels deal, he fractures his left hand in the first game in the Pelicans uniform. Herb Jones tears his rotator cuff. And would you look at that? The Pelicans. Herb Jones, right? Cap strain. Like these dudes keep getting hurt. Like these were all the players that missed that Grizzlies game, right? That went to overtime. Like this is just a sad state of affairs really. Like it feels like I’m reading a a 2025 headlines when I’m seeing Williamson is ruled out with a hamstring injury because that very same hamstring injury that kept him out after they made it to the plan and he had 40 points in that players playing game but lost. That same injury that reared its ugly head in 2024. Well, what do you know? Time is a flat circle and we see yet another hamstring strain that is sidelining for seven to 10 days. Oh my god. Now, I think a lot of YouTubers have already talked about some of the trades that Joe Dumar has made in the short months that he’s been the executive VP of basketball operations in New Orleans. He decided to give the Pacers their pick back from 2026 during the finals in which Halurn was suffering from calf strain, right? I think it was shortly after game five, right? So, the game seven hadn’t happened. This pick, you know, to be fair to the Pelicans, you know, was probably set to be a low late first round pick because of how good the Pacers looked in the finals. The pick was actually top four protected when the Raptors traded for it, right, from the Pacers, right? And and obviously, uh, you could say, well, the Pelicans, you know, they could still have a high lottery pick, right? Despite the Pacers, you know, retaining a top four pick. It could go to five. It could be a six pick. That’s still a high pick. And I think a lot of people really the trade that they don’t like from Dumars is the trade up to get Derek Queen at 13. Even though Queen has been balling as of late and even though he shows signs to be a franchise cornerstone that’s lethal on offense, it almost feels like the bar was set way too high now because of this trade. Derek Queen has to be way better than Cooper Flag. It’s not enough that he outplays him in a regular season game like he did against Dallas this year. He has to be by far the best player in the class. It has to be demonstrably clear because what they gave up to get Derek Queen could potentially be an even bigger, better, higher pick in 2026, a loaded draft that could even end up being better than Cooper Flag overall in their careers. Like that’s the type of blunder that Dumar is potentially in for. And it doesn’t matter that Derek Queen could have a sensational career in his own right. Months before the firing even happened in November, right? It seemed like Willie Greenw had lost virtually all player support, but it was ownership that insisted that he be retained. In this video here where Joel Demores addresses the dismissal of Willie Green, it’s not really a video. It’s just a still image with Joel Demor’s talking. I don’t know why they they had this video just be a still image, but whatever. When you look at the comments, right, they are not having it, right? You see a lot of people that are so happy to see Willie Green fired. Some people were saying they were going to watch the Pels play basketball again. And this is where we have to address the root of the issue, right? Shamadua beat Ryder for the Pelicans. He does a great job outlining how the Pelicans problems isn’t Joe Dumar’s, right? The headline says it’s ownership’s shortsighted approach. The first line of this article encapsulates this perfectly. The New Orleans Pelicans aren’t hiring Joe Dumar to fix their problems. They’re hiring him to ignore them. Joe Dumar is a guy that worked in the league office. This guy has a lot of connections. He’s a guy that is, you know, very trustworthy, right? This is a guy that Gail Benson can trust, not just, you know, to carry on and to do the things that are needed to be done for as as a vice president, right? But also take a boatload of the blame for all the problems in New Orleans. Because now that the bigger scapegoat and Willie Green is out of there, they’re going to look at Joe and say, “Hey man, what have you done for me lately?” The owners can rest assured that Pelicans fans, they’ll look at the next scapegoating, Joe Dumar, right? Not to say that he isn’t at fault for any of this. Not to say that he hasn’t done stupid decisions over the last seven months that has led the Pelicans to be in one of the worst situations in NBA history, but is that just like we’ve outlined years past, this has been a dysfunctional franchise for longer than Joe has been here, longer than Brandon Ingram has been on a franchise, longer than even AD has been on that franchise in 2012. Joe Dumar kept reiterating that a big part of why he fired Willie Green was because the the Pelicans lacked an identity, right? Identity. Identity. They they just need an identity, right? And he he just didn’t feel like the Pelicans were building something that, you know, was cohesive as as an as a team that needed to find an identity. Identity, identity, identity. But as many Pelicans fans will tell you, this problem of a lack of identity was was was there for years. It would look like they found something. Oh, they’re in the playoffs. All of a sudden, they’re not in the playoffs anymore and things begin to falter and they’re in a downturn. There’s players hurt and there’s only one common denominator in all this. Of course, the owner, right? We we we always got to talk about it. Recent reports, recent articles have actually outlined that David Griffin tried to fire Willie Green twice, right? Years past, but it was Gail Benson, the owner, who refused to do so because apparently she had a great relationship with Willie Green. Not just that, she had an even better relationship with his wife, Tara. They were bffs apparently. And I already know Saints fans are cringing hearing that because it almost sounds like what’s been going on in the last couple days for them. So, Gail Benson sat for a rare interview, right, where she got asked about the performance of the general manager of the Saints, Mickey Lumis. And apparently, this is what she said here. It may not be what the fans want to hear, but as far as firing Mickey Lumis, that’s ridiculous. He does a great job. Mickey’s been one of the top NFL general managers. He’s a great guy. He’s got a bunch of rookies. He’s got a new coach who just was in the Super Bowl. I mean, what else can I do? What else can you do when this Saints team apparently, right? I’m looking at some of these stats, bro. He’s probably been working there for way too long. He should have been fired years ago. He’s living off this Super Bowl win that they’ve had decades ago. As an NFL casual, even I know the Saints have not been particularly good in recent years. But the last time they were in the playoffs was in 2020. That’s almost six years ago. I mean, what the hell have they been doing recently? They What have they been doing for me lately, right? That’s what people are going to ask her. And Mickey Lumis, this guy, this GM, right, that apparently it seems like she has a really good relationship with. So much so that when I check this guy’s Wikipedia page, right, it’s so funny. This guy, oh man, this guy’s resume is basically that he’s a Saints, right, director of football administration in 2000, 2001. Then he becomes their general manager 2002 all the way to 2012. And in 2013, becomes their executive vice president, general manager, which is what what he’s been doing since, right? Apparently, he also worked for the Pelicans, the basketball team as an executive vice president of basketball operations before David Griffin got hired. Bro, who is this guy? What the like? What? It didn’t take too long for me to see that he’s been embroiled in some controversy himself. Apparently, there was an NFL investigation that found out players were paid bonuses from a pool for their onfield performances. Oh boy. And because of that, Lumis was suspended his first eight games of the 2012 NFL season. Bro, this guy not only is still working, but Gail’s going to be out here parading him as if he’s a top GM. I mean, I think NFL fans, would you agree that that’s not true? Like, what I mean, the bar must be in hell if this is the top GM of the NFL, bro. Like, in the interview, Benson said, “Both teams are not for sale.” And oh boy, there you have it, folks. She’s not selling the team anytime soon, it seems like. Which means nothing is going to change in New Orleans in terms of football, basketball related. Uh, oh man, it’s just going to get bad. It’s going to keep getting bad until she sells a team. Gone are the days of yester year when it was her husband that owned the team, right? And he passed away to where she basically got ownership of the team. Gone of those days where they were Super Bowl winners. That was in 2009. We’re in 2025 26. Okay. What have you done for me lately? And based on the last 5 years alone for both franchises, they lost in the first round 2024 and also lost in the first round 2022. How many games did they win both series here? Well, they won two games in 2022 and they won no games in 2024 where they got swept by the thunder and now they own one of the worst records in the league. And yet again, nothing will change because the owner will still be as stupid and still be around Yesmen and she will still hire the same doofuses that have done stupid things because oh, it’s her homie, it’s her friend. Pelicans and Saints fans have to band together, protest as loud as they can for anything to change because at this point that’s the only way for things to change. Otherwise, bro, there’s no point supporting this franchise.

Zion Williamson & the New Orleans Pelicans have struggled to win NBA games to start this season. And some say that it’s because the franchise is forever cursed by supernatural forces. But that’s one of the many red herrings thrown to ignore the very real causes of the Pelicans downfall.

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