New Orleans Pelicans Rank: Unranked Player Roundtable

Sep 30, 2013; Metairie, LA, USA; A detail of a New Orleans Pelicans logo poses for a portrait at Pelicans Practice Facility. Mandatory Credit: Derick E. Hingle-USA TODAY Sports

Making the decision on how to approach the two newest members of the New Orleans Pelicans for the Pelican Rank project was tough. Neither Bryce Dejean-Jones or Jeff Adrien seems likely to make the Pelicans roster out of training camp and if either does they are even less likely to stay on the roster for the entire season.

With a project that is about defining who are the best and worst players on the Pelicans, including Dejean-Jones and Adrien makes the decisions easy. After all, no matter what happens those two are the worst players on the team which is shown by the fact that Dejean-Jones went undrafted and Adrien has bounced around the league.

With all of that in mind I made the executive decision as the editor to not include the two in the ranking system. Part of it came from the fact that I already had a few rankings in before they were signed since we have been planning this project for a while now. The other part was that it just seemed to easy, I wanted this project to be tough and in the end it turned out to be that way.

That said both are technically members of the Pelicans roster right now which meant that we had to do something with them. Dejean-Jones doesn’t really have an NBA prototypical play and Adrien hasn’t really played enough to give him one either and no writer really had any ideas for longer pieces. With all of that in mind it didn’t make sense to give each player their own day like we will with the 13 ranked players.

So instead a few writers got together for a roundtable touching on both players. That way Dejean-Jones and Adrien get their time to shine and we get to talk about them without forcing them into the project.

So welcome to the first official piece for the 2015 Pelicans Rank. It should be a fun ride.

Next: We Start With Bryce Dejean-Jones