Frank Jackson, Restricted Free Agent
2019-2020 Salary Figure: $1.6 million
Missing his first full season of NBA action with an injury before being a contributing piece of the New Orleans bench for the past two seasons, 2017 second-round pick Frank Jackson is set to hit the free-agent market for the first time.
If fans have watched ten or more games combined from either of the past two seasons, it’s likely that they’ve experienced the Frank Jackson rollercoaster; he’s either going to hit some big shots and play solid defense or turn the ball over like crazy and match it with some odd shot choices.
There are a lot of capable bench point guards in this league that have a similar skill level to Jackson, but the Pelicans could easily be inclined to hold its course with a known commodity.
Just 21-years-old and a part of the team’s pipeline to Duke University, the easy option would be to hand Jackson his qualifying offer and see if any team wants to get him on an offer sheet; then, they can either match that or let a team pay him a more lucrative contract.
Likelihood of resigning with the New Orleans Pelicans: 55% chance
Jahlil Okafor, Unrestricted Free Agent
2019-2020 Salary Figure: $1.7 million (veteran’s minimum)
Two years after being picked up off the scrap heap by the New Orleans Pelicans and a handful of up-and-down performances since Jahlil Okafor is once again hitting the free-agent market.
It doesn’t seem incredibly likely that the Pelicans will need Okafor to round out their roster moving forward, as the center received a lot of “DNP-Coach’s Decision” nods this season despite the team’s dealing with a lot of injuries to key players, appearing in just 28 games.
With Jaxson Hayes developing, Nicolò Melli doing a nice job against smaller lineups at the center position, and the team likely to need roster space for its picks in this year’s NBA Draft, it’s just hard to carve out a roster spot for a slow-footed, paint-focused center.
Once the third-overall pick in the 2015 NBA Draft by the Philadelphia 76ers as an early piece of “The Process”, it’s been a pretty underwhelming five seasons of professional basketball for Okafor, who could have a hard time finding the next job in this league.
Likelihood of re-signing with the New Orleans Pelicans: 10% chance