New Orleans Pelicans All-Time Franchise Team: Starting Center

Apr 25, 2015; New Orleans, LA, USA; General view of t-shirts placed on the seats before game four of the first round of the NBA Playoffs between the New Orleans Pelicans and the Golden State Warrior at the Smoothie King Center. Mandatory Credit: Derick E. Hingle-USA TODAY Sports

The New Orleans Pelicans are a unique franchise. With just 13 seasons in the franchise history books, New Orleans lacks the historical length of most of the NBA’s members, which leads to interesting discussions surrounding the team’s best players.

With that in mind we here at Pelican Debrief decided to use the final dead part of the offseason to have some fun and put together our own All-Time New Orleans Pelicans teams.

The rules were simple. Each member of the staff would choose a “starter” and “backup” at each position based on who they felt were the best players to have come through the New Orleans franchise since the 2002-2003 season. When looking at players overall talent mattered in the sense that it was the talent the player displayed in their New Orleans career, meaning if anyone decided to take Tyson Chandler it was the New Orleans version of Chandler that would be on the roster, not the Defensive Player of the Year version.
For positional qualifications a player had to play a significant amount of their minutes at a spot, meaning Jrue Holiday does not qualify for the shooting guard spot nor Tyreke Evans for the small forward role, though Evans does qualify for a shooting guard spot due to the way his time is ambiguously distributed.

After each person decided on their picks they wrote a short explanation of it and over the course of the next week everyone’s picks and explanations will be revealed in positional posts. Each day will start with a post revealing the backup for each writer starting on Monday with point guards before moving to shooting guards Tuesday, small forwards Wednesday, power forwards Thursday, centers Friday and two wildcards that can play any position on Saturday.

So feel free to jump into the comments on any post and leave the player you feel should fill each roster spot. At the end of the day we expect to see some variations along the way, which is part of what makes this project so fun.

Editor’s Note: Our image database only goes back two years so former players may not be pictured in Pelicans/Hornets gear or at all.

Next: Matt's Selection