Culture Shock: The Times Are Changing for the New Orleans Pelicans

Following the news of Danny Ferry‘s hiring as a special adviser to the New Orleans Pelicans basketball operations staff, one question bares asking: does he deserve a second chance?

Early Wednesday morning, The Undefeated’s Marc J. Spears reported that former Cleveland Cavaliers, San Antonio Spurs and Atlanta Hawks executive Danny Ferry had been named special adviser to the New Orleans Pelicans basketball operations staff, apparently at the insistence of General Manager Dell Demps. This appears to be a final buttoning up of the operations staff following a tumultuous 2015-16 season that saw high expectations beget disastrous disappointment.

Around the trade deadline, concerns arose that Demps may not have been entirely in control of the front office, perhaps having lost his place as the top Pelican on the New Orleanian totem pole. At that time, accompanying rumors swirled about Detroit Pistons flameout Joe Dumars being next in line for the throne. Nothing materialized.

As the season progressed, those Dumars doomsday prophecies morphed into slightly-more-intriguing conjecture hashing out the possibility of the Milwaukee Bucks forgoing an extension offer to GM John Hammond. Naturally, a talented executive with ties to both coach Alvin Gentry and Dumars immediately garnered abundant speculation from the local and national media. Again though, the situation never moved past hypothesization; no offer was made.

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On April 13, the Pelicans finished the regular season with a 35-point loss to the Timberwolves in Minneapolis to fall to 30-52. They were eleven games behind the Houston Rockets for the eighth seed that they earned just one year ago.

However, the story behind the disappointment began a few months earlier when, on February 11, the wife of former coach Monty Williams passed away. To hear the players tell it, Ingrid was as beloved behind the scenes as any man or woman not with the team day to day.

On the May 16 episode the Vertical Podcast with J.J. Redick, forward Ryan Anderson, who has been with the Pelicans since 2012, discussed his relationship with the Williams family:

"“… There’s a reason why I was able to be there [New Orleans]- and stay there- and that was Monty Williams… He was such a rock for me. He was there on the night I found her [Gia Allemond, the girlfriend of Anderson’s who took her own life in 2013]. He was the first person I called. He came right over, picked me up, and dragged me out of that condo complex. He took me to his house… Ingrid his wife was there all night with me, sitting right next to me, talking to me.”"

During the time after Ingrid’s own death in early 2016, the team united around Monty and the family, as devastated as they were unified. Anthony Davis described Ingrid as something of a second mother:

Anderson said the news “hit [him] in the gut”. New Coach Alvin Gentry took the time to appreciate and articulate the influency Monty Williiams had had on the team, saying “Monty Williams has had such an impact on the players, and she had even more of an impact, maybe, with the mothering that she did for most of the guys”. All of this love poured out for the family, despite the fact that Williams had since moved to a new post as an assistant in Oklahoma City. Players and coaches from across the league joined Williams in celebration of his wife’s life, where Monty gave one of the most powerful eulogies you’ll ever see.

Moments of profound solidarity like this have, unfortunately, dotted the Pelicans’ calendar for what has come to seem like eons. Last November, when a series of terrorist attacks decimated central Paris and left the rest of Europe worried and terrified, center Alexis Ajinca played 24 minutes visibly shaken, nearly notching a double-double amid a season that saw Ajinca’s personal regression surpass even the lowest of the team’s lows.

Forward Quincy Pondexter, a heralded young piece whose return to New Orleans late last season corresponded to the run that put the Pelicans in the playoffs, struggled through two surgeries before eventually missing the entire 2015-16 campaign. His status is undetermined for the start of the new season, but he is expected to play. At this point, his ability to return to the court has become more vital than returning to his previous level of performance.

As if two-plus years of misery were not enough for one small market basketball franchise, the writing of this piece comes on the heels of more agonizing news: 23-year-old guard Bryce Dejean-Jones, who had recently inked a new deal after a promising February, passed away in late May after a misunderstanding in his girlfriend’s apartment building led to the firing of gunshots and his eventual death. Basketball production and team-building aside, there’s little to no precedent for this kind of agony staring a franchise straight in the eyes for so, so long.

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Replacing Williams with someone as upstanding and well-respected as Alvin Gentry was a perfect continuation of the culture that the players and staff have worked to create in New Orleans. Keeping a quiet, patient guy like Demps around to see his project to its finish is the right decision. Suddenly, it seems like that string of good might be coming to an end; Danny Ferry, though a no-brainer from a basketball perspective, was available for a reason.

In 2014, with the Hawks’ future finally brightening thanks to several shrewd personnel decisions, the team’s nucleus began to self-destruct. While going after free agent Luol Deng, Ferry fell victim to his own insensitivity; despite garnering interest from Deng, a recording surfaced of Ferry in which he suggested that Deng’s supposed two-facedness may have stemmed from his African heritage. Many of Atlanta’s ownership partners demanded that his dismissal be immediate; Ferry had other ideas. The battle between him and ownership raged on through the summer, even as the Hawks finished a sixty win season with a berth in the Eastern Conference Finals.

On June 22nd, the new Hawks ownership group, featuring entrepreneur Anthony Ressler and basketball lifer Grant Hill, finished off Ferry’s dismissal with the release of two documents: a report of his efforts behind the scenes in sensitivity training sessions and meetings with the NBA’s most active African-American leaders, and a rosy media release relinquishing Ferry of nearly all ill feeling. Despite the organization’s prolonged faux pas’s, there were legitimate questions circling the league as to if he would ever be allowed in another NBA front office.

After this week, it appears we have our answer.

Since Chris Paul left New Orleans in 2011, the team has nurtured a winning environment centered around Anthony Davis, the hard-working young All-Star/freak of nature, and a familial culture; they give credence to perhaps the most tired narrative in all of sports: these things don’t happen over night. While that might undervalue the actual work and energy that the entire staff has put in to make this happen, it is, nevertheless, accurate in detailing the tribulations that go into developing a successful team.

Remember also that this is what the New Orleans Pelicans are still- a successful team. They were in the league’s top half last year, and hope to get back there in 2017. What is troubling about the path they seem to be taking to get there, however, lies in its nonsensical overvaluation of “smarts”. Too often, the team seems to value guys who have experience or gusto rather than those from whom one could reasonably expect contributions that would go toward winning basketball games.

Occasionally, that boneheaded personnel management leaves Mickey Loomis with far too much power. Other times, the incompetence of an ownership group dealing with violent familial conflict leaves Possible Racist Danny Ferry in power. While I hate to resort to the publicity-fueled lows established by this year’s presidential candidates, it seems right for the foreseeable future to refer to Ferry by his full title: Possible Racist Danny Ferry. Considering the lack of clarity surrounding his exact role in an oversaturated Pelicans front office, that’s probably the closest we’ll actually get to a title outside of “adviser” for a long while.

The hope going into the offseason was clear: cash in on long-awaited draft capital, finalize Davis’s non-Rose Rule contract extension and build toward a reappearance in the NBA Playoffs next season. While New Orleans is not a big basketball market, it wasn’t hard to imagine the draw of a culture that is so publicly pronounced. This is what has allowed teams in cities like Detroit, Dallas, San Antonio and Memphis to stay competitive throughout most of the young century; by building an intelligent and unified core from the top down, a franchise can sustain winning seasons for decades at a time.

Alvin Gentry, Dell Demps, and Anthony Davis are the kinds of people that enforce that culture. Monty Williams deserves a heap of credit for perpetuating that culture by creating the ideal mold for a New Orleans Pelican before leaving town. Many of the role players, including Quincy Pondexter and Jrue Holiday, seem to fit that mold. Scrap heap free agents enjoy tremendous success on this team every year, and that mold is a big part of why. It is easy to succeed around kind, talented people.

Danny Ferry might be talented, and he might be kind, but he is not a positive culture enforcer, nor the creator of ideal molds. Ferry has overseen the construction of winners in Cleveland, San Antonio, and Atlanta- all great teams that have succeeded despite their small markets. He has now ruffled feathers in two of those cities to the extent that they no longer cut his checks. In Cleveland, his tenure was marred by disagreements over how to move forward into a potentially post-LeBron world. In Atlanta, tension between he and several minority owners exploded as his racially-charged dialogue left the team in shambles.

Can we trust that New Orleans won’t be the next city to fall victim to his misgivings? And, at this point, after all the organization has been through and all it has done to build an impenetrable skin around itself, can it afford to be that victim?

If the goal is merely to return to the playoffs and build a championship contender around Anthony Davis, the franchise can probably ignore the risk and accept the reward. But sport has always meant so much more to a community than a win column or standings sheet; the value of a professional franchise has always lain in its ability to entertain and instill pride in its constituency.

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That may come in the form of a Larry O’Brien trophy, and it very well may not. But if I’m choosing between victory I can take pride in and victory brought about by a ticking time bomb of a bigot like Danny Ferry, I’m choosing the former each and every time.

It’s safe to say that at this juncture, Ferry is going to have to prove to the league that the incident in Atlanta was isolated and not representative of his true attitude. If that ends up the case, I’ll have no issues eating my words. In fact, I’M HUNGRY: FEED THEM TO ME DANNY.