New Orleans Pelicans: Breaking down Stan Van Gundy’s two-big lineups

Tim Duncan and David Robinson, Robert Parish and Kevin McHale, Ralph Simpson and Hakeem Olajuwon, and… Jaxson Hayes and Steven Adams?

The NBA has seen plenty of legendary big man duos in its history, but the key word there is the past participle seen. The age of putting together two bruising bigs has been over for some time now, but Stan Van Gundy recently re-introduced it to an extent as a wrinkle in the New Orleans Pelicans’ recent lineups.

Over the last few weeks and as recently as the loss to the Brooklyn Nets, the Pels’ head coach has experimented at times with playing two of his bigs together. Most notably, there was April 4th when Van Gundy started both Adams and Hayes against a tiny Houston Rockets frontcourt, but this ostensibly anachronistic vision has permeated the Pels’ rotations as of late.

My take? There’s a reason why we don’t see two pure centers start together anymore.

Quite frankly, I don’t get the point in playing these lineups unless the point is to lose. And with the Pelicans visibly trying to make a push for the play-in tournament—even if said push has practically been dashed after four consecutive losses—getting an early lottery pick is putatively not the goal for now.

As is the case with basketball nowadays, everything starts but does not end with the eye test. To the human eye, these dual big lineups are restrictive on both ends of the floor.

None of the Pelicans’ centers have a dependable outside shot, with Hayes having the most three-point makes at a whopping three. One was a buzzer-beating heave, by the way. Today’s NBA looks for a deluge of outside shooting, rather than feeding the ball to the interior so centers can feast.

This lack of shooting, coupled with the fact that both Zion Williamson and Brandon Ingram are better suited to spaced out teams, severely constricts the Pelicans’ offensive competitiveness. The negative spacing is unsustainable and the stats reflect that, as well.

I pored through the advanced metrics for all three of the Pelicans’ big man pairings to check whether I was missing something. Maybe something seemed bad when watched on my TV screen but was actually good in practice. That turned out to be somewhat true, but my general opinion has not shifted.

The Pelicans’ offensive rating, which reflects how many points a team scores per 100 possessions, is 114.6 as of April 21. New Orleans’ effective field goal percentage is at 54.1 percent. The team’s defensive rating is 115.3.

With Jaxson Hayes and Willy Hernangómez together, something that has happened 43 minutes over seven games, the offensive rating nosedives to 93.7 and the defensive rating slightly improves to 111.2. The effective field goal percentage also decreases by nearly three points. I’m not a huge math guy, but I don’t need to be to write that the minor defensive improvement is not worth it because of the downright atrocious offensive numbers.

Everything is relatively better when it’s Hayes and Steven Adams together. In their 35 minutes on the floor, the Pels’ net rating is a neutral zero. The offense continues to be pitiful, correctly attributed in my opinion to the terrible spacing, but the defense is genuinely sturdier. New Orleans only gives up about 103 points per 100 possessions with both Hayes and Adams, a figure that would lead the NBA by an almost four-point margin.

Finally, it’s even rosier with Adams and Hernangómez being put together. They’ve only shared the court for a total of six minutes, but their net rating is the highest of any two-man combination on the team. The Pelicans scored a pummeling 160 points per 100 possessions with the New Zealand and Spanish centers together, while conceding an equally demoralizing 86.7 defensive rating.

So what’s the deal with these lineups? Are they actually good? Should it just be the Hayes/Hernangómez pairing that is hushedly eight-sixed?

Well, the answer is complex, but I remain steadfast in that these lineups are not good. Maybe they will produce some short-term gains, but the New Orleans Pelicans franchise should not take such a myopic view of the ball club’s future. Of course, this is complicated because Van Gundy genuinely does want to win games, so the practice is nowhere as easy as the theory.

Still, even though putting Adams and Hernangómez together for a few minutes might give the Pelicans a big offensive outburst on a random Saturday afternoon game, the Pelicans should focus on building habits for the future. They should be trying to piece together a team that somewhat resembles—even if one really has to squint—the iteration that will hopefully fully maximize Zion Williamson and lead the Pelicans to have a season in legitimate championship contention.

Of course, this is very utopic because, for all we know, the New Orleans Pelicans never fulfill that potential. This is a franchise that has squandered positive situations before and history points to Williamson not winning a ring in the big easy.

But it’s fun to dream and basketball is all about wanting to see your team succeed, even if your current season odds are small or even if your franchise does not have a storied past.