Pelica Debrief
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New Orleans Pelicans: Revisiting the 2005 NBA Draft

By Nolan Jensen

LOS ANGELES - FEBRUARY 19: Chris Paul #3 of the New Orleans Hornets poses for a portrait prior to the 2011 Taco Bell Skills Challenge as part of 2011 All-Star Saturday Night presented by State Farm on February 19, 2011 at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by downloading and/or using this photograph, user is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement. Mandatory Copyright Notice: Copyright 2011 NBAE (Photo by Jesse D. Garrabrant/NBAE via Getty Images)
LOS ANGELES - FEBRUARY 19: Chris Paul #3 of the New Orleans Hornets poses for a portrait prior to the 2011 Taco Bell Skills Challenge as part of 2011 All-Star Saturday Night presented by State Farm on February 19, 2011 at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by downloading and/or using this photograph, user is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement. Mandatory Copyright Notice: Copyright 2011 NBAE (Photo by Jesse D. Garrabrant/NBAE via Getty Images) /
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The New Orleans Pelicans (then Hornets) benefited from poor decision making by multiple organizations in the 2005 NBA Draft. Let’s take a look at how things transpired.

The New Orleans Pelicans* entered season number three of their existence in the 2004-05 season, with coach number three—despite the previous two campaigns resulting in playoff appearances. Just like the previous year, their season was marred by injuries, this time proving too much to overcome. The team won just 18 games under the direction of first-year head coach, Byron Scott. Their horrid season did have one gleaming positive: the fourth overall pick in the 2005 NBA Draft.

Like I said—even though the team landed the fourth pick—they did need a little “luck” to find the franchise-altering talent that was going to lead them back to the postseason. The Milwaukee Bucks, Atlanta Hawks, and Utah Jazz all were billed to pick ahead of New Orleans. The Bucks used their first overall pick to select Andrew Bogut, the Hawks went with Marvin Williams and the Jazz chose a point guard of their own, Deron Williams.

Bogut did have a season where he led the NBA in blocks, he’s been to an All-NBA team and an All-Defensive team, and won a ring with the 2014-15 Warriors. By all accounts, a respectable NBA career—he’s just not the same caliber player of which the Hornets selected. Marvin Williams, at times, has been a good NBA player, just not really deserving of a second overall selection (but neither was MKG, Derrick Williams, Thabeet, Beasley, Okafor, Milicic, Stromile Swift.. I can do this all day, 2nd overall picks have been historically terrible).

Deron Williams was actually in the “best point guard in the NBA” discussion for a while at his peak, which now feels like eons ago. He was a three-time all-star, two-time All-NBA member and led the Utah Jazz to the Conference Finals in just his sophomore season. His game didn’t age well, which is unfortunate because he’s more than likely going to get lost in basketball lore, but he was a top three point guard in the league at the height of his powers.

Now, let’s get into what New Orleans did in the 2005 NBA Draft. With their selection, they took Chris Paul out of Wake Forest. He had an immediate impact on the team, boosting their win total by 20 games in his rookie year. In his six seasons in the Big Easy, Paul averaged 18.7 points, 9.7 assists, 4.5 rebounds and 2.2 steals per game 47 percent from the field and 37 percent from distance.

He led the league in steals three times in those six seasons, as well as assists twice. At the age of 22-years-old, he led New Orleans to a 56-26 record and came up just one game shy of the Western Conference Finals. His talent was on prime display in the team’s second-round matchup against the defending champion, San Antonio Spurs.

Doing battle with the reigning Finals MVP, Tony Parker, Paul averaged 24 points, 11 assists, and 3 steals for the series and was instrumental to New Orleans jumping out to an early 2-0 lead (which ultimately made losing Game 7 at home that much more painful). With New Orleans, Paul made three All-Defensive teams and three All-NBA teams.

He eventually was traded to Los Angeles (once to the Lakers, then a second time to the Clippers, thanks to a famous David Stern “nix”) for Eric Gordon, Chris Kaman, and a draft pick that eventually culminated into two and a half seasons of Austin Rivers. You can’t really say they won that deal, especially after seeing how Paul transformed how the Clippers were perceived in the NBA spectrum. But hey, five years of injury prone, unproductive Eric Gordon though! Am I right? No?! Yeah, that’s fair.

The Pelicans bombed with their second-round picks in both the 2003 and 2004 NBA Drafts—they continued that trend in 2005. With the 33rd overall pick, they selected Brandon Bass from home state Lousiana State University. He would become a nice rotational piece later in his career with Boston but never saw more than 9.2 minutes of action per game in New Orleans.

It’s hard to do much of anything with those minutes, so his averages of 2.2 points and 2.2 rebounds in his two seasons with the team make sense. The second round in 2005 saw players like Lou Williams, Marcin Gortat, Ersan Ilyasova, and Monta Ellis picked after Bass. In hindsight, it’s easy to critique their selection but at that moment, this was a pretty safe pick.

Next. Revisiting the 2004 NBA Draft. dark

Don’t lie to yourselves though, Monta Ellis or a young Lou Williams would have been great to watch, not saying it would’ve been successful, but it definitely would’ve been fun. Monta waving off CP3 and dribbling the shot clock out, just to heave himself into multiple bigs surrounding the paint, beautiful. I wonder how many times a day Steph Curry misses him as his backcourt partner.