New Orleans Pelicans: How Stan Van Gundy’s offense fits the team

New Orleans Pelicans: Stan Van Gundy’s offensive playbook.

The Pick and Roll

Like all teams in the NBA, Van Gundy likes to run the pick-and-roll. In his first years in Detroit, this was pretty much all they ran, as they had limited talent on that end.

Even so, the Pistons were able to form a successful pairing with Drummond and Reggie Jackson, which is impressive considering neither of them have a jump shot.

It was most effective when Drummond dove hard to the rim on the roll and Jackson followed, either pulling up for a floater or lobbing it to Drumond.

The Pelicans have a lot of candidates to run the pick-and-roll and they should be able to use Zion Williamson in a very similar fashion to how Van Gundy used Drummond.

It should be even more effective because Zion is much more of a threat to score than Drummond.

Another reason the Detroit PnR was effective was that Jackson was good at hitting runners, floaters and finishing at the rim. Unfortunately, these are areas where Lonzo Ball is not very good. Lonzo will need to improve his ability to finish at the rim if he wants to be in a successful pick-and-roll combo with Zion.

Luckily the Pelicans have other ball handlers. They can run pick-and-roll with any combination of Brandon Ingram, Jrue Holiday, J.J. Redick and Zion, so Van Gundy will have a ton of weapons to work with, far more than he ever had in Detroit.

Eventually, teams figured out the Detroit PnR, largely because neither of the players running it were that good. It should be even more effective in New Orleans, where Van Gundy will have better players and way more options.