New Orleans Pelicans: Rotation issues are making injury risks higher

The New Orleans Pelicans are risking their future of this core by not having a serviceable rotation early in the season

Something’s been on my mind lately that I just can’t shake. Sure, the New Orleans Pelicans are off to a solid start on the season, but their biggest weakness is just bugging me non-stop.

That weakness is the Pelicans’ lack of a reliable second-unit. Coming into the season, I wrote that this could be an issue for the team, but I had faith that players like Nicolo Melli and Jaxson Hayes would step forward.

Now it’s become obvious that a lot of the Pelicans bench players aren’t any better than they were last year, and outside of the Josh Hart-J.J. Redick combo, none of them doing anything great on either end of the floor yet.

I’m not here to write about how the Pelicans can fix this rotation, because the truth is, it’s going to be hard to do. The Pelicans have all their money locked up in their starting five with Eric Bledsoe, Brandon Ingram, and Steven Adams all having big contracts. That leaves the team with little salary-cap space to make any significant trades.

What I want to write about is the fact the David Griffin and the New Orleans Pelicans organization is taking a bold risk by building their team like this. Why is it such a risk? That’s simple, injuries and history.

The New Orleans Pelicans are risking the health of their starters by not addressing the rotation

Let’s look at it this way. The Pelicans hired Stan Van Gundy this offseason intending to be competitive and winning.  Stan Van Gundy is a coach with a reputation for winning, so of course, he’s going to do everything in his power to do that.

In this case, for Stan Van Gundy to win, he needs to play his best players heavy minutes. That means he’s rolling with a 7-man rotation. His starting lineup along with Josh Hart and J.J. Redick.

This should scare every Pelicans fan, especially if we consider the Chicago Bulls. The Bulls of the early 2010s were very similar to this Pelicans team, young and talented. They even had a winning head coach too in Tom Thibodeau. Unfortunately, they had a lackluster bench. That resulted in Thibodeau playing his starters for a ton of minutes to win. We all know how that ended, with tragic injuries to Derrick Rose and Joakim Noah.

I don’t want the New Orleans Pelicans to go down that road, and it’s making me nervous they might in pursuit of winning. We already saw Zion Williamson go down with an injury last year, and Eric Bledsoe has a history himself. Stan Van Gundy even spoke out, saying he’s against resting healthy players too. 

This is dangerous and something every fan should be keeping an eye on. If this rotation doesn’t get better we could be looking at the New Orleans Pelicans’ best players getting banged up for parts of the season, and no one wants to see that happen. I think every fan should put the pressure on David Griffin and hope he does something with all his assets to improve this rotation.