New Orleans Pelicans heading towards dysfunction after Monty Williams firing

The New Orleans Pelicans are quickly heading towards the worst possible label in the NBA, dysfunctional. Nobody wants to be known as a dysfunctional team. It shows a sign of consistent failures, no clear plan or direction, and worst of all it drives potential free agents away. It’s a label so dangerous that even market size is no match for it. There’s a reason the New York Knicks are always terrible, and it took the Los Angeles Clippers decades to remove it.

Now, it’s not like the Pelicans are intentionally trying to be dysfunctional. They must believe the moves they’re making are for the right reasons and are in the best interest of the team. That’s the problem with dysfunction though. It’s never intentional, and while the Pelicans may not know it, they’re currently flying at dysfunction with full speed with their firing of Monty Williams. 

New Orleans announced the firing of Williams on Tuesday, and that was followed by a little bit of head scratching, but no actual shock. After all, Williams coaching decisions were met with criticism throughout much of the season and there were rumors throughout the year that his fate had already been decided. The only reason the firing became controversial was because Williams had managed to drag a very injured Pelicans roster all the way to the playoffs, and despite poor defense throughout the year, the team had shown improvements once Williams was given an improved roster. As a result, it seemed a little weird to fire the coach, but it was at least understandable.What followed the firing however was definitely not something from an organization one would call in control.

When a head coach is fired, there’s usually some speculation and or backlash about the decision, but the firing of Monty Williams led to a floodgate of rumors and guesses about who is actually in charge. Now we have to wonder if the firing of Williams was ever justified in the first place.

For starters, why was Williams fired? Dell Demps said multiple times in his press conference that this decision was about moving forward, and not looking backward, he even went so far as to say that Williams did a good job. Good might be a strong word, but there’s no denying that the Pelicans played well once Williams was given an actual roster to work with. However, his ability as a coach might not have mattered at all since we see in Adrian Wojanrowski’s article that there was an apparent power struggle between Demps and Williams.

Does this mean that Williams ability as a coach didn’t matter at all, and this move was purely do to off court issues? It’s a possibility, and it would justify the firing as we’ve seen multiple times over the years that an organization where coach and management don’t work well together leads to discourse and failure. There’s also evidence to support their deteriorating relationship, such as Demps not being the one to inform the coach of his removal, and Williams curiously leaving Demps out while thanking the organization for his time spent in New Orleans. 

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If Demps and Williams relationship was the sole reason for the decision to move on from the coach then everything would make sense, as that happens quite frequently, but it’s Ken Berger’s report that is raising eyebrows. Everybody knows that Joe Dumars has long been rumored to be connected to the Pelicans, but never before have we heard that he’s already giving his input on basketball decisions to team owner Tom Benson. If he was currently working for the team that would be one thing, but he’s only been rumored to be linked to them, and as far as we know he is not working for the Pelicans at this very moment.

So we now have Joe Dumars working for the Pelicans organization without actually being hired by the team, a former coach that was fired for unclear reasons, and Dell Demps stuck in the middle somewhere. Do we even know the level Demps has input on personnel decisions at this point? His press conference was a disaster and came off in a way that seemed like he was merely the face everybody saw while decisions were made in the shadows. He was very abrasive towards questions trying to press him and looked incredibly uncomfortable the entire time. It’s also very weird that he was not among those to inform Williams that he was fired.

Right now, from an outsider’s perspective, it looks like there’s a gigantic mess going on up top in the Pelicans organization. It’s never a good thing to have a coach and management fighting, and it’s even worse for rumors to be popping up that someone not working for the team is putting his input in on personnel. It really comes off as dysfunctional, and that kind of atmosphere is a bad look for attracting free agents, or working with other NBA teams. However, the Pelicans are still in a good position to pull themselves out of this and make any talk of the word dysfunction go away. If they tread carefully, make the right decisions, and put these Joe Dumars rumors to bed then they’ll be sitting pretty. If not, well,  in a few years we could just look at this being the start of where things started to turn.