NEW ORLEANS (WVUE) – A big priority for Pelicans head coach Willie Green, and especially for new lead executive Joe Dumars, is not to let poor play from their 21-win season carry over to the next season.
With both Dumars and top executive Troy Weaver holding ties to their former experience in Detroit, the Pelicans also want to avoid what happened to the Pistons in 2023. That season, Detroit finished the season with only 14 wins.
With former Pelicans GM Trajon Langdon as their league executive, Detroit turned its franchise around the following season by winning 44 games and appearing in the postseason.
The key to the Pistons’ success last season was that they had plenty of talented depth on their roster, which is the approach Dumars seems to be trying to take with the Pels.
The Pelicans recently traded veteran leader C.J. McCollum and Kelly Olynyk, both 34 years old, for Washington’s Jordan Poole and Seddiq Bey, both 26 years old. They also selected 18-year-old Jerimiah Fears out of Oklahoma at No. 7 and aggressively traded their No. 23 pick and next year’s unprotected first-round pick to move up to No. 13, selecting big man Derik Queen out of Maryland.
In total, the team added 6 players over the past week, and more could be on the way.
Pelicans TV analyst Antonio Daniels believes that the winning formula in the NBA has changed.
“You have guys that can guard multiple positions right now,” Daniels said. “You start to add in depth, because in today’s NBA, with an 82-game season, you don’t want it to be a situation where your star player has to play 40 minutes a night… that comes from the depth. That means you have to be able to trust your bench, lean into your bench on a lot of these nights.”
See a spelling or grammar error in our story? Click Here to report it. Please include the headline.
Subscribe to the Fox 8 YouTube channel.
Copyright 2025 WVUE. All rights reserved.