New Orleans Pelicans: Grading Alvin Gentry’s coaching job in 2019-2020

Not always looking like they were ready to play this season, Alvin Gentry has to take a little bit of the blame for the slow start to the New Orleans Pelicans’ campaign.

One area where he truly thrived was managing the minutes of Zion Williamson, who only appeared in 19 games after an early-season injury. Despite the organization employing a minutes restriction, Gentry still got 29.7 minutes per game out of the rookie in 19 starts, none of which featured

An area of frustration would be his lack-of-ability to find a good fit for Nicolò Melli in his team’s rotations early in the season; he was clearly a good floor spacing option but is usually too slow to cover non-centers around the perimeter.

The best days during this Pelicans season came when Gentry found the proper way to mix Josh Hart, E’Twaun Moore, Jaxson Hayes, and Melli into the lineup at the right times, as all four can be boom-or-bust pieces depending on the night.

Anytime your team goes on a 13-game losing streak, especially when some of those losses come to struggling squads like the Detroit Pistons and Phoenix Suns, some blame has to fall on the head coach.

At the very least, Gentry proved that he could make the New Orleans Pelicans competitive under its current bunch of players.

Not a perfect coach this season, Alvin Gentry was, at the very least, a good leader for this newly assembled bunch of Pelicans.

His ability to turn this offense into a multi-dimensional unit and a devastating threat in transition gave the team a nice foundation from which they can start to form this roster into a contending bunch.

Navigating multiple injuries to star players and coordinating a roster that turned over more than half its foundation from the prior season, Alvin Gentry silenced a lot of the critics and would’ve been a Coach of the Year candidate had the team found a way to crack the playoffs.

Shaking off early-season hot seat sentiments, Gentry proved to be a head coach the New Orleans Pelicans can count on to continue guiding their core into the future, at least for the next few seasons.

While he still has a lot to prove next year when this roster should be really pushing hard for the playoffs in the West like the Dallas Mavericks did this season, Gentry showed that his system and vision are good fits for this era of basketball in New Orleans.