Zion injury puts Nicolò Melli in position to shine for New Orleans Pelicans

While Zion Williamson is down after the team’s perfect preseason, another New Orleans Pelicans rookie is set to make a big impact.

On Thursday evening, the start of the Zion Williamson era for the New Orleans Pelicans received a delay, as soreness in his knee turned into an injury that will keep the rookie out for the first few weeks of the season.

Instead, another rookie power forward in Nicolò Melli will get a chance to take on a prominent role to start the season for the Pels.

With Zion out and J.J. Redick moving into the starting lineup, Melli will be either the sixth or seventh man for this New Orleans bench.

Preseason has gone really well for the 28-year-old rookie from Italy. In the five games, he averaged 8.8 points, 5.4 rebounds, and 2 assists, shooting 37.5% from the floor and 32% from three.

After playing a great game of the preseason basketball against the San Antonio Spurs on Sunday, Melli struggled at Madison Square Garden.

Coming off the bench against the New York Knicks last night, Melli had his worst game of the preseason, but once again proved a two-way factor for the New Orleans Pelicans.

Melli scored 7 points, going 2-of-7 from the field (all attempts were from three-point range) and 1-of-2 from the free-throw line. He filled the stat sheet, however, contributing 3 rebounds, 3 assists, and 2 steals in 22 minutes.

However, his stroke from three looked as good as ever, continuing to leave an appetite for what might be if he starts making an even higher rate of his deep looks spin through the nylon.

Entering the 2019-2020 season, Melli was already pegged for a key role off of the New Orleans Pelicans’ bench, but now he’s likely to be listed as one of the team’s key shooting options on opening night against the Toronto Raptors.

His high-energy effort this preseason helped push this team to a perfect 5-0 run through the preseason, especially as the team battled down the stretch of a few games. Gentry trusted Melli and the rest of the bench, who delivered all preseason long.

Truly, he’s a rookie and we still have a lot to learn about his game, even if he’s a little older than the average entry-level talent. The New Orleans Pelicans have been calling on him early and often off their bench in the preseason, which might tell us that Alvin Gentry has taken a liking to the scorer.

Melli could give the New Orleans Pelicans the big, floor-spacing forward they really need to solidify this roster.

Unlike the typical first-year player, Melli is entering the league having already played a ton of professional basketball; it was just exclusively overseas.

While Melli doesn’t have the physical tools to match what Zion can do around the rim, he’s certainly a much more effective perimeter shooter than his fellow rookie.

In Europe, Melli was a renowned sharpshooter, so much that the Atlanta Hawks tried to add them to their roster back in 2017, but he wasn’t ready to come to the states quite yet.

Spending 9 seasons playing European Basketball before coming to the NBA, Melli comes to the Pelicans after shooting 38.5% from three a year ago for Fenerbahce. Over his last four seasons though, Melli shot 42.1% from three-point range, averaging 9.3 points per game.

Never much of a volume scorer Melli has only averaged 20.7 minutes per game during his career, despite his positive effect on the floor.

The thing that probably makes Nicolò Melli a logical fit on this team, above all else, is his motor, which might explain the lower minutes count.

In the preseason, it was easy to notice how hard Melli was playing while he was on the floor. It has yielded 2.2 turnovers per game from the rookie, but he’s going full-speed at all times, diving off screens and finding open looks; a lot of those open looks seem like they’ll fall with time.

Melli called coming to the NBA “a kid’s dream,” upon being drafted to the New Orleans Pelicans. He’s a guy who wants to be here, someone who fits the fight David Griffin for looks for in his players.

The team will use Derrick Favors and Jahlil Okafor to play offensive anchor, in most cases allowing the rest of the guys on the floor to create space for open looks. Where Zion gives them a deadly option in the pick-and-roll, Melli will allow Gentry to call on his guards to open up the perimeter.

Nickeil Alexander-Walker seemed to find a good rhythm with Melli, as both rotational rookies found ways to frustrate opposing defenses, acting as really smart screeners for each other around the three-point arc. Each has been essential to the other’s early success.

Now for Melli, without Zion in the mix, it’ll be about developing a similar flow with Lonzo Ball and Jrue Holiday, both of whom are wonderfully creative offensive facilitators.

Without Zion there to feed on the inside, but Melli can draw mismatches off screen-and-fades, absorbing a smaller defender, thus creating a rise-and-fire look.

New Orleans Pelicans fans will come to love Melli; he seems like someone who could actually become a solid piece of this bench for years to come, even drawing starts as he establishes himself in the league.

It’ll be about how much time it takes for Melli to find his comfort zone in the NBA after spending so much of the beginning and middle of his career in Europe. Now, he’ll have to adjust to the world’s most elite competition.

With the start to the regular season set for just three calendar days from today, the New Orleans Pelicans will have to figure out their team without Zion Williamson in the mix to start his rookie year. Maybe it’s not ideal, but it could allow the rest of the team to gel before the star comes shining for the remainder of the regular season.