New Orleans Pelicans: Revisiting the 2011 NBA Draft

The 2011 NBA Draft easily possessed one of the better draft classes of this decade. So, naturally, the Pelicans (then Hornets) traded away their first-round selection for a backup point guard. Let’s have a look.

The 2010-11 season marked the last time Chris Paul would lace up his Jordan branded sneakers as a member of the New Orleans Pelicans*. They did play well that season, earning a 46-36 record and a postseason appearance under first-year head coach, Monty Williams. The defending champion, Los Angeles Lakers, would ultimately knock them out of the round robin in six games, and thus an era ended in the Big Easy. For their efforts that season, they were rewarded with the 19th overall pick in the upcoming draft.

Alright, there are a couple of alarming similarities with how Chris Paul departed and how Anthony Davis is going to inevitably depart that I think are worth bringing up. Paul was nearly traded to the Lakers if not for a now-famous David Stern “nix”. Which still makes very little sense, the Lakers were Stern’s baby—why wouldn’t he want a 26-year-old CP3 teamed up with a still capable Kobe Bryant? Stern did own the Pels at the time, for what that’s worth. Anthony Davis wasn’t necessarily nearly traded to the Lakers, but his camp’s intent was on getting him there.

Chris Paul was a franchise-altering talent entering the prime years of his career when he demanded a trade, the same could be said about Anthony Davis. Chris Paul ended up in L.A, just with the Clippers, could the same occur for Davis? That’s up to Trajan Langdon and David Griffin to decide. Just be thankful we no longer have Dell Demps to orchestrate a trade of this magnitude (his trade package for CP3 was better than Stern’s but that doesn’t alleviate nearly a decade of incompetence).

Here’s hoping for no mentions of the city of Los Angeles when Zion Williamson enters his prime. Let’s get back on topic, so how did the Pelicans do in what was their first draft in the post-CP3 era? Well, they did horrifically, and that shouldn’t come as a surprise at this point. New Orleans traded away their rights to the 19th overall pick in the 2011 NBA Draft for, sigh, Jerryd Bayless. Yes, you heard this correctly. This was an actual thing that happened. But wait, it gets even better.

Who exactly ended up going 19th overall that draft? Great question, glad you asked, it was Tobias Harris. You know that free agent this year that many fans have contemplated the Pelicans targeting with freed up cap space? That guy who doesn’t demand the basketball in a halfcourt setting, can stretch the floor and shoots at a super efficient rate, and can create his own offense by using his dribble? All-star caliber talent that is still only 26-years-old? Yeah, that guy was traded for a backup point guard.

There’s the argument that entails we didn’t know what the 19th overall pick was going to become. But that’s not the point. Why would you ever trade a first-round pick, be it protected, for a guy that averaged 6.8 points, 2.0 assists, only connected on 0.3 three-point field goals per game and shot just 40 percent throughout his first two seasons? I mean he was a former lottery pick back in 2008, but so were Jason Thompson, Brandon Rush, Joe Alexander, and Anthony Randolph!

Bayless would literally only play 11 games in New Orleans…which further adds infuriation. He was traded to the Raptors with Peja Stojakovic for Jarrett Jack, Marcus Banks, and David Andersen. So essentially a young backup point guard that was valued high enough to trade a first-round draft pick for was then shipped after 148 minutes with that team for a package centered around a veteran back up point guard? Do you see a problem with this formula?

Sticking with the trend of treating draft assets like they’re beneath them, the Pelicans would then go on to trade their second-round pick, Josh Harrellson, for $1 million to the New York Knicks. Jeff Bower didn’t utilize the draft well, in fact, it was one of his major flaws. How did Demps not witness what transpired in the Bower era and not put a concentrated effort into not letting history repeat itself? What’s Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity again?