How Stan Van Gundy affects the New Orleans Pelicans’ 2020 NBA Draft

Will Stan Van Gundy’s hiring affect how the New Orleans Pelicans handle the 2020 NBA Draft?

When an NBA team hires a new coach in the offseason, it’s always fair to wonder how much he’ll affect the team’s plans in the draft and free agency. This is what the New Orleans Pelicans fanbase is going through now with the team hiring Stan Van Gundy.

With not a lot of cap space to spend on free agency, most Pelicans fans specifically have their eyes set on the 2020 NBA Draft, and they’re wondering what will Van Gundy’s role be in that event.

If you ask any number of Pelicans fans, they’re probably hoping that Van Gundy has little to no say in the draft, after his tumultuous run as the Detroit Pistons’ President of Basketball operations. They’re thinking that Van Gundy is the guy who drafted Stanley Johnson and Luke Kennard over Myles Turner, Devin Booker, and Donovan Mitchell.

I’ll be the first to tell you that’s a fair assessment, but if you look at the blueprint of what Van Gundy was trying to build in Detroit, his model wasn’t wrong. The idea around drafting Stanley Johnson, Henry Ellenson, and Luke Kennard was to surround his big man star Andre Drummond with a 3-and-D wing, a stretch 4, and a dynamic scoring guard. It made all the sense in the world, Van Gundy just picked the wrong players to fulfill those roles.

In fact, Van Gundy’s model is a reason why I believe the New Orleans Pelicans’ front office hired him in the first place. That’s the model that Van Gundy has executed for essentially his whole career, and you can tell the Pelicans are trying to build something similar with their selection of players, most notably their franchise cornerstone Zion Williamson.

How the New Orleans Pelicans front office will include Stan Van Gundy in their NBA draft strategy

Unity between the front office and the head coach is important, especially in the draft. If a team drafts a player that the coach thinks can’t play then he won’t play them, and that draft pick becomes wasted. A front office needs to get some input from their coach before making a draft selection.

So am I saying that I’d have Stan Van Gundy picking the players for the Pelicans front office, no that’s preposterous, and clearly the front office has a vision for constructing this roster. What I’m suggesting is that Stan Van Gundy’s hiring will make the Pelicans approach the draft from a collaborative standpoint.

How will that happen? I’m no expert but I think about it like this, David Griffin and Trajan Langdon will go through all their pre-draft process and they might check-in and ask Van Gundy for his input. For example, the front office might go to Van Gundy at pick 13 and ask him if he feels the team would be better with one prospect or another. I think they’ll also ask Van Gundy what he thinks the roster needs for him to make the team competitive.

In the end, Van Gundy’s own draft history might be scaring some New Orleans Pelicans fans, but it shouldn’t. Stan Van Gundy’s inclusion to the New Orleans Pelicans will affect the draft and that’s a good thing because it’s showing that the Pelicans are becoming a unified organization with consistency from their upper management that continues down to his coach.