Willie Green on Derik Queen, 2025-26 NBA Season | New Orleans Pelicans
news came out about Queen being cleared. Uh how much was he able to do today? He went through pretty much a full practice today. Full contact practice. Um you know, glad to have him back and you know, he’ll continue to work through it and obviously it’ll be a little rust there, but he’ll get better and better as we progress. He’s still early in the process, but how much are you kind of putting on his plate just to kind of get him ready for the start of the season? Well, he’s just he’s ramping up. He’s ramping up. We got a few days for him to ramp up. Um the medical team will continue to evaluate how he feels after each day and then we’ll have updates accordingly. Is there like temptation to say, “Let me get him out there as soon as possible,” or do you kind of say, “No, I’m just going to kind of play it safe and listen to what they tell me.” Yeah, I just we we we got to listen to, you know, the medical team. Obviously, we got to listen to how his body is responding. You know, this is his first time playing uh with with with contact in a long time, a few months. So, we don’t want to rush. We don’t want to throw guys out there and rush, but if he’s ready, that’s a that that’s that’s another uh conversation that we’ll have. And Will, can you talk about Kavan’s injury a little bit? We know what happened in Australia. Did he asked to come out? Was there a specific play that happened that basically caused the injury? Yeah, it was. He he kind of got rolled somebody rolled up on his leg, rolled under him, fell kind of awkward, and um he has to come out after that. So, once he got evaluated, you know, we we learned more about it. We know it’s his left leg and it’s a sprain. So, he’s just working through it now. And is he just not going to be able to do any kind of rehab until he gets re-evaluated? Can he do like just bike work or anything? Yeah, he’s doing he’s doing he’s doing stuff on the floor a little bit. He’s doing some bike work, but they want to, you know, allow us some time to calm down and, you know, he’ll go from there, but he’s doing all this necessary rehabilitation work. It’s just a matter of, you know, how sore is it and and what movements feel comfortable for him. With preseason over and now you guys turn to the regular season, you have some extra days here to practice. What’s the focus for you as far as what’s you really want to lock in with this team before you take the court Wednesday? You know, trying to implement all of our concepts. Um, starting on the defensive end, you know, again, stepping on the floor with a a mentality of physicality and toughness and togetherness, communication. Um, it’s some things that we can clean up from playing against really, you know, two really good teams. We saw defensively um we want to rebound the ball. You know, big emphasis for us is especially when you play against these big teams, you got to finish possessions. Offensively, again, playing fast, getting out an open floor, creating some offense off off of our defense, which we we’ve been really good in the past. Have you settled on what the identity of this team is going to be this year? We going to be one of the the the most competitive teams in the league and so scrappy, young, playing fast, uh and playing with energy. is a fast start. Is is that kind of a media creation or do you kind of say, “Hey, look, I want to see Zion is the guy and Trey in a bigger role and we want to see results sooner rather than later.” Well, you always want to get off to a good start. Um, you know, we’ve had a really good training camp. We like some things that we saw in preseason. Uh, a lot of good a lot of good transfer from practice to the games, but also some some some concepts that we can clean up. So, we’re we’re well aware of that. But getting off to a good start, I’m sure every team in the league is saying the same thing to their teams. Let’s get off to a good start. Uh it’s a long season, but you got to come in with the mentality for us to try to win every day. What about uh Carlo? How’s he doing? Uh didn’t practice today, so we’ll continue to monitor him. And just how important was it just we talked about uh Houston and Orlando being kind of those physical teams, those teams that you kind of look to as you want to be more like that. just what was your takeaway from those two games and how you matched up against those two teams. Yeah, I I came out of those two games extremely encouraged. Um those are two teams that are predicted to be, you know, pretty good in the West and in the East, Orlando in the East, Houston. Um they’re big, they’re physical, they rebound, um they’re good defensively, they’re sound defensively. So, you know, what I saw from our games and I told our group this is that we had some some moments where, you know, we were right on point and we we have to be more consistent in those areas. That’s the growth for our team. When we can do that, you know, bring the physicality, rebound the ball, we got to be a better passing team offensively, um it could be scary. And so, I’m encouraged coming out of those games. We got work to do. We got to continue to work on those concepts, but when we get there, um, we we can be a really good team. It looks like the team’s going to need to rely on Eve a little bit, at least during these first couple of weeks or so. What have you seen out of him that’s encouraged you about that he’s going to you’re going to be able to rely on him? Just taking a step another step forward after his first season. Had a really good first season for us. We had to kind of thrown him in the fire early. Um, so he he’s he had an opportunity to get a lot of experience because of uh our situation last year with injuries. So he’s ready. He’s ready to step on the floor. He’s going to compete. Uh, we’re going to challenge him to be one of the better rebounders and rim protectors. And um, that’s what we want to see from Eve. Just take another step forward. Does he look stronger to you? And also just fundamentally, he understands everything better. He does. He’s getting better and better. Um, it’s, you know, we’re aware that it’s his second season. Um, but you know, he’s shown the capability of of being able to take in all the information that’s thrown at him and then apply it to the floor. Can I ask one more quick question here? I don’t know if you saw the video this week of the Boston Celtics staff versus the media, but my assumption is is that you would you would probably put Will in handcuffs if we played your staff in a game, right? That was hilarious, by the way. I saw that uh Joe Missoula and his staff uh wore the media out. Um, it was it was just I’ve never seen anything like that and so we all were laughing about it. I’m sure the media in Boston were were having a good time with it. Uh, Will, I won’t put you on the spot. If we if we play and you guard me, you’re in trouble. I know watching you all practice. I don’t like you, Brewer, Moose. I’m like I don’t I don’t know if we can score a bucket. Yeah, we we I think we got a solid team. I said my goal. We got to get more. Bring your Bring your best. Bring your five. Bring your five. Bring your five. Bill said that the media would score more than four in the coaching staff. I I told him I bet the under guarantee. As long as we have Anthony, y’all hear that? Can’t wait to get AD and West. Yeah. Nuhuh. Y’all don’t get AD and West. All right. Daytime.
New Orleans Pelican head coach Willie Green speaks with the media after Pelicans practice at the Ochsner Sports Performance Center on Saturday, October 18, 2025.
#pelicans #nba #neworleanspelicans
Latest NBA News & Pelicans News @ https://www.pelicans.com
Subscribe to the New Orleans Pelicans YT Channel: https://bit.ly/PelicansSubscribe
Add the Pelicans Schedule to your Calendar: https://calendar.pelicans.com/
Latest Pelicans News and Updates: https://www.nba.com/pelicans
Latest NBA News and Updates: https://www.nba.com/
Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PelicansNBA/
Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PelicansNBA
Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pelicansnba/
Find us on Snapchat: https://www.snapchat.com/add/pelicansnba
Get the App: http://apps.yinzcam.com/nba/nop