New Orleans Pelicans: End of the season roundtable
By Nathan Heck
With the season finally ending for the New Orleans Pelicans and their fans, the writers at Pelican Debrief took the time to reflect on the season as a whole and the future.
This season certainly wasn’t great for the New Orleans Pelicans, friends. In fact, when looking back at the preseason predictions roundtable, the Pelicans were worse (and the situation was worse) than any of the writers even predicted in their worst case scenario. The team did not even come close to the 45+ wins nearly every writer predicted, and fans and writers are left entering this offseason with a lot of the same questions as last year.
Injuries were a major part of the team struggles, and it is hard to win games when four of your five preseason projected starters were eventually knocked out of commission for the season with various ailments. From day one, the 2015-16 Pelicans represented a massive compromise between what Alvin Gentry wanted the team to do and what the talent was capable of doing.
As a result of all the injuries, though, the Pelicans were able to find some potential contributors, namely Bryce Dejean-Jones and Tim Frazier. Bryce Dejean-Jones was aggressive with the basketball and could develop the necessary defensive skills with proper NBA level coaching, and he appears to be a long term project at the shooting guard spot. Tim Frazier electrified fans with his passing, but his scoring was extremely inconsistent. It would be no surprise to see Frazier on the team next season as a bench guard.
To discuss the season, Rick Stone (@RickStoneNBA), Brendon Kleen (@BrendonKleen14) and Nathan Heck (@NathanHeck22) participated in this roundtable. On the following slides, you will read their answers to the various questions posed by Nathan. Without further ado, let’s move on to the roundtable discussion.
Next: MVP of the season