Pelica Debrief
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The Omer Asik trade is slowly becoming a problem for the Pelicans

By Matt Cianfrone

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Once the Pelicans acquired Omer Asik from the Houston Rockets this summer a few things seemed destined to happen.

Asik was going to team with Anthony Davis to help the Pelicans field a top 10 defense this season, allowing them to compete for the playoffs and he would sign a new contract with the Pelicans when he became a free agent this summer, making the mid-first round pick New Orleans gave up to acquire him meaningless.

As it turns out though, things aren’t always as clear as they appear from the outside as Asik hasn’t exactly done what he was expected to this season for New Orleans which is starting to raise the question no Pelicans fan wanted to hear this year. Was the Omer Asik trade in fact a mistake?

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    • On the surface Asik has done what the Pelicans acquired him to do. So far this year the big man from Turkey has done an outstanding job of protecting the rim, holding opponents to 48.4 percent shooting at the rim on 8.5 attempts per game this season. Dig a bit deeper though and there are some very troubling things popping up with Asik that leave his long term future in New Orleans a bit murky.

    First of all, and most importantly, Asik hasn’t helped the team defense all that much. According to NBA.com’s media stat site, the Pelicans are posting a defensive rating of 106.9 in the 653 minutes that Asik has been on the floor this season, which is equivalent to the 27th best defense in the league which happens to be the Pelicans. In fact, that number is the worst of any of the three Pelicans centers on the roster with Alexis Ajinca checking in just behind Asik at 106.7 and Jeff Withey leading the group at 102.4 in much smaller sample sizes.

    There is a bit of hope in that number though as lineups featuring both Asik and Davis have posted defensive ratings of 102.3 in 510 minutes this year, a number that would rank just outside of the top 10 by just a few tenths of a point. Considering Asik has played just 153 minutes this season without Davis the total numbers could just be a product of small sample size, though it bears watching for sure.

    The bigger Asik problem comes on the other end of the floor though, where he has been an absolute disaster so far this season. Of all players that could be considered in the rotation at some point this season, the only players that have more negatively impacted the Pelicans offensive ratings by being on the floor this year are Luke Babbitt and Alexis Ajinca.

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    With Asik on the floor the Pelicans are posting an offensive rating of just 102.0, a number that would rank 20th in the league, just ahead of the Milwaukee Bucks. Asik is an essentially  useless offensive player outside of  three feet and it has been a big problem for the Pelicans. Team’s are starting to lay farther and farther off of Asik when he is on the floor as a way to cramp driving and passing lanes, knowing that Asik can’t hurt them if he can actually catch a pass.

    So far this season 88.4 percent of Asik’s shots have come from within 0-3 feet of the rim, with 10.1 percent of the remaining 11.6 percent coming from 3-10 feet. Despite being seven feet tall and shooting from basically directly in front of the rim almost every time he touches the ball, Asik has managed to be blocked 37 times this season according to basketball-reference( for comparisons sake Asik has dunked just 31 times this year).

    Add all of the problems up and it leads to Asik posting a net rating of -4.9 so far this season, ahead of only Ajinca, Babbitt, Salmons, Russ Smith, Darius Miller and Patric Young. While there is still time to change things the early results just aren’t any good so far.

    All that leads to is the question of what to do with Asik this summer. If things stay remotely the same it is hard to see how bringing Asik back makes any sense at all.

    Tying yourself long term into a player that only fits in on one end of the floor (defense) in a specific set of lineups (with Davis on the floor),  is just a bad idea. Without considering what they gave up to acquire him in the first place it is hard to see the case for Asik to stay in New Orleans long term without serious change in the numbers on both ends of the floor during the last part of this year.

    But we do have to consider what the Pelicans gave up for Asik because they didn’t acquire him for nothing, and the Pelicans aren’t playing for just this season. Sure, the 2015 first round pick isn’t helping the Pelicans or Rockets THIS season. In fact, for Houston it may not even help them next season and the pick may never turn into an NBA player.

    What the pick is though is a low cost controlled asset for the next few years. For a team looking into the future those seven years of control (counting extensions) are a big deal to just give away. If the team does gamble with Asik under the premise that things will get better for some reason, (like a new coach with new schemes) and things don’t the Pelicans will have traded a cost controlled asset for the right to overpay a player that doesn’t really fit on the roster. Doing that means that New Orleans would be giving up money they could have used on multiple bench players to build depth beyond value signings of flawed players like Babbitt and Ajinca. Either way is a bad situation for a Pelicans team that is building for three and four years down the road.

    Just over a third of the way into the season isn’t time to come to a final conclusion on the Omer Asik trade. Plenty of things can and may change before the end of the season which could steer this discussion in an entirely different fashion. It is time though, to realize things could potentially not work themselves out like we expected them to early in the season. In that case the discussion shifts to what to do with Omer Asik this summer and with it how to judge the trade that was made to acquire him.

    And in that case, at this point, it doesn’t look great for the Pelicans.

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