If the New Orleans Pelicans have designs on making the playoffs next season, they should look to the Pacific Northwest for pitfalls to avoid.
As the Pelicans front office prepares for the beginning of the 2021 offseason, their attention will be on maximizing Zion Williamson and Brandon Ingram as the focal points of what was a pretty successful offense.
Zion has vaulted himself into All-NBA consideration this year on the strength of a 27/7/3.5 season; while Ingram missed out on an All-Star nod despite his 24/5/5 stat line being nearly identical to his All-Star season the year before.
These two are the most important players on the Pelicans roster and every move from here on out needs to be about making sure these two can reach their potential. It’s not very often teams have two All-Star level players under 25 years old on their roster, especially in just their second year together.
Zion and BI are two world-beaters offensively, the two would’ve scored the most points of any duo in the NBA this season had they not gotten hurt at the end of the season (the pair finished 3rd). Yet, the young duo wasn’t even brought up when discussing top pairings in the NBA going into this season.
That can’t be blamed just on the lack of defensive impact these two make though as any combination of the Brooklyn troika isn’t setting the world on fire with their defense. The Pels stars were just overlooked is all. Now the defensive issues with these two are not to be taken lightly as teams still need to play on both ends of the floor.
There is a team in the Pacific Northwest that can offer the Pelicans some instruction when it comes to building around two dynamic offensive talents that struggle on the defensive end.
New Orleans Pelicans: Learning from the Trail Blazers
Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum have made the playoffs every year since McCollum was drafted in the summer of 2013.
In the eight years since Dame and CJ have been paired up, the Trail Blazers have finished top ten in points per game seven times. In those same eight years, the Blazers have been a bottom ten defense five times. The only year Portland’s defense was better than their offense was the 2017-18 season when their offense finished 16th and their defense fifth, all Pelicans fans remember how that season ended for Portland.
Despite that continued success, the team has only once made the Western Conference Finals and even then they got swept. Now I’m not saying this to bring down Portland, they’ve lost to a Finals team in five of the duo’s seven playoff appearances. Just making the playoffs eight years straight now is a remarkable accomplishment and something I’m more than a little jealous of.
But what these playoff losses show us is the flaws in Portland’s style or roster or both. I’m not suggesting the team take the ball out of Dame’s hands because that would result in my immediate arrest should I ever go to Portland. What I’m saying is the players around Dame and CJ need to have a greater impact on the game.
The biggest problem with the Portland duo is their size, CJ is the tallest at 6-3. Playing two shorter guards at the same time presents defensive challenges that the rest of the roster needs to cover. The Pelicans don’t have the same issues when it comes to teams being able to pick on Zion and BI just because of size (I don’t want to piss off the person who makes Zion look small), but the defensive issues occur nonetheless.
Both Zion and Ingram have more than enough size for the Stan Van Gundy to play around with defensive assignments when it gets to crunch time. The problem is that neither is even an average defender. Zion gets a little pass on this because he’s so young but he was such a great defender in college that I thought he’d be better than he has so far.
Ingram doesn’t get as much slack in this department as he’s shown the ability to be a capable defender in the past. You could make an argument the amount of offense both are being asked to create takes so much energy and it’s only natural for them to be worse defensively. But that ignores that most of the best players in the league make an impact on both ends of the floor. I’m not asking for Ingram or Zion to become Kawhi Leonard on defense, just become average.
New Orleans Pelicans: the Pelicans need the right players around Zion Williamson
Portland has cycled role player after role player through their rotation and hasn’t found anyone that stuck quite yet. Every year the Blazers have tried to find the right combination of wings and bigs to make up for the defensive shortcomings of their star backcourt. Time may be running out on this core as rumors circulate that Terry Stotts seat is getting warmer by the day.
The Pelicans need to learn from Portland and find versatile role players who can cover for Zion and BI. It appears they may have some on the roster already in Josh Hart and Naji Marshall, both wings are capable of switching on guards and forwards alike. Didi Louzada could grow into a similar role but it’s still very early in his NBA career.
They also found veteran James Johnson, who they should re-sign as a defensive stopper who should be on a league minimum.
As Point Zion continues to evolve and initiate more of the offense the New Orleans Pelicans will need the right mix of players alongside him to make things really click.
Let’s hope the New Orleans front office has scoured the league and identified the type of players that will allow Zion to reach his final form as a defense cratering Super Saiyan, controlling the game with his sheer force of will. Portland has offered the renderings, its up the to Pels to turn the vision into real life.