New Orleans Pelicans: Full 2020 NBA Draft grades
New Orleans Pelicans: Full draft grades for both rounds of the 2020 NBA Draft
24th Pick
This is where the draft started to get frustrating for Pelicans fans.
The Pelicans traded their 24th pick to Denver for a 2023 first-round pick that will be somewhere between 15-30.
This was a calculated risk, as the pick will likely be about the same place in 2023 but hopefully in a much better and deeper draft.
David Griffin already added two future first-rounder plus two pick swaps in the Jrue Holiday trade, so the Pels now have two first-round picks in 2022, 2025 and 2027 plus pick swaps in 2023, 2024 and 2026.
That is a ton of draft capital that the Pels could use to make a blockbuster trade. Seeing how many picks the Pels got for Jrue Holiday, they must think it will take a boatload of future picks to pry away a superstar from his team.
The problem is that hoarding draft picks doesn’t always work and eventually, some of these picks have to turn into impact players. I was excited when I saw the Pels had drafted RJ Hampton, as he is a high-ceiling talent but then they immediately traded him away, which was disappointing.
There were still a lot of quality role players like Xavier Tillman, Tyler Bey, Jahmi’us Ramsey and Jaden McDaniels, any one of which might have helped the Pelicans this season.
It seems like the Pelicans are punting on this season a bit, as they had a chance to add another good player and chose not to.
Without seeing the overall plan, it is hard to grade these trades but it would have been nice for the Pels to add at least one more player.