New Orleans Pelicans: 3 Biggest What-ifs in Team History

What if the New Orleans Pelicans Hadn’t Traded for Boogie?

It’s easy to look back on the trade for DeMarcus Cousins now and say how bad it was for the Pelicans, but at the time people thought they were the ones who had gotten the steal.

The Pelicans traded Buddy Hield, Langston Galloway, Tyreke Evans and its 2017 first and second round picks for Cousins and at the time it looked like a good trade.

After all, they were only giving up an unproven young guy in Hield, a one-dimensional scorer in Evans, role player Galloway and a pick that ended up being 10th in the 2017 draft.

In exchange they were getting the most talented big man in the league and finally had another superstar to pair with Davis.

The move was a calculated risk, as the New Orleans Pelicans were giving this all up for what amounted to a rental and they had no guarantees that Cousins would re-sign in the offseason.

It turns out they didn’t need them, as Cousins suffered a season-ending injury that is now looking like it is going to end his career.

It’s hard not to look back and wonder what might have happened if the Pelicans had never made that trade.

Would Hield be thriving for the Pelicans? Who would they have taken with that pick in 2017? Would the combination of Heild and someone like Jason Collins be enough to make the Pelicans a contender? Would Davis have stayed?

Would they have been bad enough to get a chance to draft Zion?

Ultimately this trade worked out for the Pelicans because it led to the team they have now, but it looked really bad at the time and probably cost Dell Demps his job.

Every team has a checkered history, but few teams have so many questions around the ultimate fates of their superstars as the New Orleans Pelicans.

Let’s hope they make the right calls during the Zion-era so we aren’t writing these articles years from now wondering what might have been.

Thanks for reading and stay safe out there!