New Orleans Pelicans: Which Players to Trade, Which to Keep

Players the New Orleans Pelicans Should Trade

This leaves Holiday and Melli as potentially intriguing trade options. Holiday has been the backbone of the team for quite some time, but he did not stand out as much in the bubble.

His $26.1 million contract is also a large number to bite, especially considering that he has a player option he could pick up in 2021-22.

However, I think that Holiday is worth keeping around unless a star becomes available (did someone say Bradley Beal?). He averaged 19.1 points and 6.7 assists on a decent shooting line.

While I don’t think that Holiday is completely safe, he will probably be given another chance, similar to Ball, who has some trade speculation circulating his name.

Melli on the other hand was actually in the Rising Stars Challenge and seemed to be on an upward trajectory at that time in the season. However, Melli disappointed more than pretty much any other Pelican in the bubble and could not do the one thing he was under contract to do, hit 3-point shots.

In the bubble, Melli shot a wretched 15% from downtown on 26 attempts, and since his six-of-seven outing from deep against the Golden State Warriors on Feb. 23, he’s shot an even worse 12% on 60 attempts.

Since Melli is under contract for $4 million, he will almost assuredly be traded. It will be hard to find any takers for Melli, as a shooter that can’t shoot doesn’t have much value, but attaching a second round pick could potentially allow for a trade to take place.

In this scenario, we are going to attach a 2021 second round pick (from Washington) to Melli and acquire Thon Maker, who makes about $600,000 less than Melli and gives New Orleans a rim protector to develop.

If the team did not want to hold on to Maker, they could cut him for less of a penalty than holding onto Melli.

Now that on-roster decisions have been made, we can take a look at which scheduled free agents the team should bring back.