New Orleans Pelicans: Worst free agent signings of the last 3 years

The New Orleans Pelicans need to avoid these types of mistakes on NBA free agents.

The New Orleans Pelicans likely won’t have much money to spend in free agency after they extend Brandon Ingram to a max contract.

One option is to trade one of their veteran contracts, and there are myriad rumors floating about a potential Jrue Holiday trade.

But barring a big trade to someone like the Suns, the Pelicans are going to have to fill their needs in the draft and free agency.

The problem is the Pelicans have not fared particularly well in free agency over the last few years and that is putting it nicely.

Jordan Crawford, Emeka Okafor, Ian Clark and Jahlil Okafor are just a few of the free agents where they struck out, and sadly, they aren’t even the worst of the lot.

The Pelicans have made some questionable decisions in free agency that have hampered their salary cap situation and caused them to miss out on potential impact players.

Here are three guys Pelicans fans would rather forget, one who was an absolute baffling move from the get-go, and two that had potential but haven’t worked out.

Josh Smith

Josh Smith has the dubious honor of being the worst free-agent signing for a couple of different teams. The Detroit Pistons are finally done paying Josh Smith to go away and the Pelicans probably wish they’d never heard of him in the first place.

Smith was signed by the Pelicans on October 28, 2017 and waived on November 10, 2017.

In that long tenure he played a whopping three games in a New Orleans uniform. He scored a total of two points.

This wouldn’t be such a big deal except for the fact that the Pelicans paid him $2.1 million for those two points, not bad work if you can get it.

Josh Smith was actually a very good player in Atlanta for a long time but he’ll mostly be remembered as a guy who multiple teams paid not to play.