The New Orleans Pelicans will be worse in this area. And that’s ok

The New Orleans Pelicans have a made a lot of offseason changes that they hope will lead to more wins and a playoff berth.

You can argue whether the Pelicans have improved, especially in certain areas like shooting, where it is not clear that they did.

They will almost certainly be better at the free-throw line, which should help them to close out some of the games they gave away last season.

One area that they will almost certainly be worse in is offensive rebounding, as the Pelicans led the NBA last season averaging 11.7 offensive rebounds per game.

On paper, this might contradict logic, as Jonas Valanciunas was one of the few players in the league to get more offensive rebounds per game than either Steven Adams or Zion Williamson.

Adams averaged 3.7, Zion 2.7 and Valanciunas a whopping 4.1 offensive rebounds per game. So why will the New Orleans Pelicans’ offensive rebounding be worse?

New Orleans Pelicans: More space= fewer offensive rebounds

Last season Steven Adams mostly camped out in the lane on offense, which led to a lot of easy offensive rebounds when his man left him alone to double-team Zion.

I think Valanciunas is going to play more of a Brook Lopez role for the Pelicans next season, stepping away from the rim more and increasing his 3-point volume.

If so, there won’t be a big camped in the lane waiting to clean up misses like there was last season. This is a good thing, as ultimately the Pelicans need more space, so while I expect Zion to actually get more offensive rebounds this season, I think the team averages will go down as the offense evolves into one with more ball movement and space.

Better shooting=fewer offensive rebounds

Like I mentioned, it is debatable whether the Pelicans shooting has improved from last season but there are signs that it has.

They will definitely be better at center and possibly point guard, as Devonte’ Graham seems ready to embrace his role as an off-the-ball shooter.

Trey Murphy III should be the big upgrade, as he shot 43 percent in college and hopes to replicate those numbers as a rookie in the NBA.

Most of the Pelicans “shooters” (I am looking at you Redick and Melli) had horrible shooting years, so the Pelicans might be better just by getting rid of them.

Expect fewer bricks this season, which means fewer rebounds to be had.

These two factors will make the New Orleans Pelicans a “worse” offensive rebounding team, but that’s ok if it means the shooting is better and the offense is faster and more dynamic.