New Orleans Pelicans well-suited to handle Lance Stephenson

The Lance Stephenson Experience is in full-effect in the Crescent City, but the New Orleans Pelicans are better equipped to handle it than most NBA franchises.

For every franchise, front office decision-making ultimately comes down to maximizing your chances for success. This is true of any business; strike a deal with your suppliers to minimize your sale price and you’ve enticed a market into further demand for your product. Purchase another company whose potential for growth outweighs its possible flatlining. Or hire an employee whose strengths fill a need in your company and whose distracting behavior outside the workplace you believe can be remedied or quieted. The New Orleans Pelicans operate differently than most businesses in that their product is a basketball team and their profit comes in the form of 15 different men co-existing well enough over 48 minutes to outscore their opponent’s 15 guys.

Yet the Pelicans are not different from other companies in the way they make decisions; on Saturday morning, it was announced that the team had done the basketball equivalent of hiring that employee whose strengths fill a need. In this case, the need was play-making, finishing and defensive abilities from both guard spots. The new employee who will be asked to step in and try to fill that void is Lance Stephenson, the oft-maligned and extremely talented combo guard who rose to prominence during the short-lived Indiana Pacers dynastink in the early part of this decade.

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Tyreke Evans and Jrue Holiday are both expected to miss extended stretches to start the season, which left the Pelicans guard rotation inexperienced, if not barren: Buddy Hield, Tim Frazier, Langston Galloway, and E’Twaun Moore were the only true guards on the active roster after the Holiday news. Now, the veteran Stephenson will join a team with a roster full of guaranteed contracts in an attempt to snag a roster spot in training camp.

Details of the contract had not been released as of Saturday night, but one can expect that the deal is partially guaranteed- if it includes any guaranteed money at all. Like Robert Sacre, Chris Copeland and Shawn Dawson, Lance will be tasked with fighting his way onto a deep Pelicans roster during the months of September and October. The season starts on October 26th; the work begins now.

All of this is important in understanding what Lance will need to do if he is to make the roster by the end of October. He does not need to extend himself in order for the Pelicans to succeed; if nothing else, the moves made this offseason left the team better prepared for catastrophe. The four youngsters listed previously are all capable of stepping into larger roles. Considering the team attached itself to those guys in July, with players like Stephenson still on the market, they will likely be given every opportunity to prove they are ready before the front office switches gears and gives Lance a heavier load. 

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Limiting his role and outlining it clearly will be important for maximizing his production and efficiency. He is a nice love child of Tyreke Evans and Langston Galloway, a battering ram on both ends who can be cannonballed at opposing teams when the time is right. There’s value in a player like that, especially for a team whose identity will be based in speed and versatility this season.

Another aspect of the Pels’ offseason that makes this deal easier to stomach is the types of players the team acquired this summer and how they’ll be positive influences on a locker room flu like Lance. Not everyone catches the Lance bug if it’s properly eradicated at the time of discovery; positive, mature authorities like Alvin Gentry, Jrue Holiday, and Anthony Davis are some of the best presences Stephenson has had around him since David West and co. helped straighten him into something great in Indianapolis.

It seemed the Clippers were a reasonable landing place for him last season, but perhaps the loud personalities of LA’s Big Three, their coach Doc Rivers, and role players like Paul Pierce and Jamal Crawford made for an uncomfortable fit for Lance. He failed to catch on there, even in a limited role, and bounced himself into a high-usage role late in the year with a Grizzlies team holding onto a playoff spot with their last breaths. In Memphis, coach Dave Joerger and veterans like Vince Carter, Zach Randolph and Matt Barnes steadied a cast of characters unlike any we’ve seen in awhile. Stephenson thrived, and he has that stint to thank for this new opportunity in New Orleans.

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If question marks are currency in the Land of Lance, then this training camp will break the bank. But New Orleans is better equipped than most franchises to steady the rocking boat of the Lance Stephenson experience and benefit from his talents in a unique way. The extent to which this pairing ends up working for both sides will have a large part in determining the early-season record of the New Orleans Pelicans, as well as how they fare over the course of the whole season.