If the NBA season needs to be cancelled, the New Orleans Pelicans will have plenty of questions that could go unanswered.
The NBA season is on indefinite hiatus and may have to be cancelled entirely. Presently there is no way of predicting how this will affect things like the salary cap, trades or free agency for the New Orleans Pelicans.
The NBA should be commended for its quick response to the outbreak of COVID-19, one which clearly put the health of the players and fans first.
No one wants the season to be cancelled, but if that decision has to be made for the health and safety of players and the public, then it should be supported wholeheartedly.
If the season is lost, there will be many storylines left untold, glory left unclaimed and questions that go unanswered.
In the midst of a playoff run with a young team that has several players up for awards, the New Orleans Pelicans will have plenty to argue about if the season were to end today.
Here are five questions that may go unanswered for the New Orleans Pelicans.
Question 1: Could they have claimed the 8th seed?
The battle for the eighth seed in the Western Conference was shaping up to be epic.
We had three up-and-coming teams in the New Orleans Pelicans, Sacramento Kings and Memphis Grizzlies trying to start new winning traditions.
We had two old standards, the Portland Trail Blazers and San Antonio Spurs trying to maintain the status quo, which in the case of the Spurs was a 22-year streak of making the playoffs.
The New Orleans Pelicans were all over the place down the stretch.
They had won two in a row heading into the hiatus, but were just 5-5 in their last 10 games, including a couple of losses to bad teams like the Minnesota Timberwolves.
FiveThirtyEight still gave the Pelicans a 60 percent chance of making the playoffs largely due to an easy schedule.
Easy schedule or not, you have to show up every night to win in the NBA and it would have been interesting to see if the young New Orleans Pelicans could stay focused and take care of business.
All great teams go through a learning curve that usually begins with making the playoffs. Were the New Orleans Pelicans there yet?
We might never know.