New Orleans Pelicans: Draft Lottery roundtable

The NBA Draft lottery has come and gone, and the New Orleans Pelicans find themselves possessing the sixth overall pick. The Pelican Debrief staff came together to give their thoughts.

The New Orleans Pelicans will be picking sixth overall in the upcoming draft, as determined at the recent NBA Draft lottery. In general, the response to the development has been slight disappointment coupled with relief that the Pelicans did not fall even further in the draft order.

To get the entire staff’s opinions on the subject, Brendon Kleen, one of our longest tenured staff writers, put questions together for the team to answer. In addition, this serves as an excellent opportunity to welcome our new staff, Rory Calais and Preston Ellis, who both participated in this roundtable.

Without further ado…

Question one: Looking around the interwebs, the basketball media is largely unsettled on its collective big board outside the high lottery. How do you think this affects the New Orleans Pelicans and their shoddy draft history?

Rick Stone (@RickStoneNBA): After the first two picks, this draft really becomes about team need, mostly because the rest of lottery player field is near the same skill level. In the last draft, the Pelicans had the best player fall to them in Nerlens Noel. The best example of this kind of selection is the Austin Rivers pick, where they took a “need first” pick, even with some questions about his ability to contribute. That being said, it all comes down to the team knowing what player fits their needs the best. While Dell Demps has been questioned for this, this team does seem more his original vision with Alvin Gentry. If there’s any time to pick the player he thinks can fill the voids of his “dream squad”, this is the time to do it.

Brendon Kleen (@BrendonKleen14): The last time around (2012), the Pelicans were afforded the enormous luxury of drafting the consensus best player, assumed by many to be an era-/defining talent. They also drafted Austin Rivers. So, basically, I have no idea. Luckily, the needs are more numerous and the roster is more concrete this year compared to 2012, so the team has the opportunity to add more precisely the piece it likes. The second tier of players has three guards in Buddy Hield, Jamal Murray and Kris Dunn that can contribute almost right away. It will be up to the scouting staff and the front office to determine which of those three they feel meshes best with style of play and personality, as it’s more than likely that at least one of them will be available at six.

Preston Ellis (@PelicanBriefNBA): It awards them a wealth of opportunity.  I think a lot of people are underestimating how much NBA ready talent is available in this draft.  They’ll have an opportunity at Buddy, Murray, Brown, Dunn, or Bender and it’ll be up to Demps, and possibly his future with the Pelicans, to make the right choice.  We’ll also learn a lot about the future of the Pelicans through this pick.  Do they take a chance on a developmental player like Bender and institute a soft rebuild?  Do they go for Buddy and target some free agents to overpay?  The Pelicans may not have a lot of draft history in the past five years, but they will have every opportunity to rectify it this year by taking the right player.  

Rory Callais (@Rory_Callais): I’m with Brendon in that there is hardly a precedent for how Demps will draft. The last go round, he picked the no-brainer (Davis) as well as a guy who is no longer on the team and would possibly no longer be in the league had he not ended up on his father’s team. This lottery, the third through seventh picks feel like largely a wash, so I think Demps’ true prowess will be revealed in how he manages the second round picks. Demps has proven to find diamonds in the D-League rough before, so it is not out of the question that he finds a solid rotation guy deep in the draft.

Charles LaRocca (@CLaRoccaJr):  Evaluating past history in terms of previous drafts is useless in terms of who they may target. However, the possiblity of Dell Demps trading the pick should not be overlooked. Besides the obvious pick of Anthony Davis and the disaster of a pick in Austin Rivers, the Pelicans have chosen to forgo the building through the draft route. In the 2013 NBA draft the Pelicans owned the 6th pick and at the time they were a team in the midst of a full scale rebuild and still chose to trade that pick for a proven commidty. With Dell Demps firmly strapped into the hot seat another possible trade should not be ruled out, after all history does tend to repeat itself. One thing is for certain however, whom ever the Pelicans choose it will start to clear up the clouded direction of this franchise.

Nathan Heck (@NathanHeck22): Ah, the burden of putting my answers in last. Brendon and Charles both stole my thunder. Oh well. As has been said before, it is extremely difficult to gauge Dell Demps’s ability to identify talent in the draft since he, you know, hardly ever drafts. This year’s pecking order is particularly murky, and that certainly makes me worry about this front office’s ability to select the most appropriate and talented player at sixth overall. More worrying, though, is that Demps will come to the conclusion that no one who will be available when the Pelicans pick that is worth the sixth overall selection and trade the pick. If we’re judging on history, that’s almost a safer bet.

Next: The middle of the first round