Dear Mr. Loomis: A New Orleans Pelicans blogger’s last resort

The month of May has provided New Orleans Pelicans’ fans a disturbing glimpse into the true nature of the dysfunction in the team’s front office.

On July 12 of this year, a mere eleven days after the start of the NBA’s free agency period, New Orleans Pelicans owner Tom Benson will celebrate his 89th birthday. And while I’m sure there is some 89-year-old triathlete who might beg to differ, the number 89, when used next to or near the word “age”, draws to mind a pixelated image of an overripe banana.

In 1985, when Benson was 58, he purchased the New Orleans Saints football franchise, saving it from a possible move to Jacksonville. For the next twenty-five years, the team ran in place as Benson’s personality rose above the team’s popularity. The drudgery of Saints fandom collided with the destruction of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 when the same Superdome that he had pleaded to replace for years became a haven for many affected by the storm.

There to pick up the pieces of a franchise Benson had torn apart was one Mickey Loomis, who, in 2002, had been hired away from the Seattle Seahawks to be the team’s general manager. Loomis replaced Randy Mueller, who had put together an NFC West champion in just two years at the helm. Benson cited only “communication problems” in firing Mueller.

Loomis’ tenure with the Saints has wrapped controversy around success, with the violent Bountygate scandal and 10-year-old eavesdropping allegations tied neatly around the team’s Super Bowl victory in 2010. As a result of Loomis’ involvement in the Bountygate scandal (failing to squelch the program after Benson’s urging), he was suspended for the first eight games of the 2012 NFL season. Figuring Mickey might be bored in that downtime, Benson rewarded Loomis with the title of Head of Basketball Operations of his other franchise, the NBA’s New Orleans Pelicans.

More from Pelican Debrief

A mere month after Benson purchased the team and put Loomis in charge of his second sports organization, franchise cornerstone Anthony Davis fell into the team’s lap. Three years later, the team won 45 games on its way to a playoff berth.

And now, here we find ourselves; wondering how the hell we got to the point where Dell Demps was rumored to have been surpassed within the team’s chain of command at the trade deadline, how an official decision still hasn’t been made about his future and how (ON EARTH) someone like Joe Dumars was rumored to have an inside track toward replacing Demps.

That’s the big question right: how (ON EARTH) has this all happened? It’s all great that Loomis played basketball in college. It’s awesome that Benson respects honest workers who do their business publicly and communicate their tactics privately. It’s wonderful that the team made the playoffs last year. It’s great that they might get college basketball’s best player in the draft this year to replace the disastrous centerpiece of the ill-fated trade that saw New Orleans lose its biggest star outside of its quarterback.

Heck, it’s baller that the team was able to snatch two lead assistants from their first round foe, the Golden State Warriors last summer. It’s magnificent that Anthony Davis has blossomed into an inside-out scoring presence that he can drop a 59-point nuclear bomb on his opponents. But, it’s absolutely, resoundingly atrocious that the team has run itself into the ground inside and out.

There’s a lot to say about Benson, but he really seems to love the city and has, for all his faults, seemed to care about providing its residents with an entertaining product of which they could be proud. It truly feels like there’s no one to blame but Loomis here.

You’re telling me the NFL draft is too distracting to properly assess the managerial situation of the basketball team? That the basic duties of an executive have culminated in a frustrating time crunch that you can’t handle, Mickey? Huh. Seems like you probably should only have one high-paying, high-stress, high-responsibility job, then, no?

I wish Anthony Davis was enough. I can almost convince myself that the development of Dante Cunningham, the coalescence of the training staff, or the intelligent snatching of scrap-heap talent is enough, but it isn’t. It never can be, because to deem that crapshoot job acceptable is to accept resounding, destructive mediocrity.

The degree to which we’re blessed to have Anthony Davis locked up for the next five years (at a cheaper rate, most likely- thanks, media at large!) is equaled only by the bombastically destructive extent to which Loomis keeps the team in shackles- unable to build through the draft, incapable of making logical moves in free agency. It would be one thing if this were shocking, it’s an entirely different thing considering it, 100 percent, is not shocking.

An hour or so of googling came up with precisely zero evidence that a situation like this has existed in the entire history of professional sports. Imagine Bill Gates trying to simultaneously run Microsoft and Amazon simply because they’re both based out of the Pacific Northwest. Insane, no? Now, imagine if instead of Amazon he took over a cattle farm and slaughtered cows instead of making a decision about Microsoft’s marketing department.

I’m getting sick.

Considering the actual ownership rights of the team are in doubt just as much as much as the job status of its GM, change is far from the horizon. Change is on a distant moon- maybe one of Saturn’s; they have a lot, right- one so far away and so clouded from our vantage point that viewing it is just about impossible. Maybe now that there are three months until the Saints’ camp opens and the NBA combine presents Loomis with the actual responsibility to acknowledge his basketball franchise, decisions will actually be made.

Next: Perception vs Reality: Anthony Davis, Rim Protector

Actually, you’re right. Never mind. I literally just giggled.