NBA Free Agency is quickly approaching, and for the New Orleans Pelicans, this go around will be all about bolstering their team around their nucleus of Zion Williamson, Brandon Ingram, CJ McCollum, and Trey Murphy III.
After dealing with some injuries and inconsistent playing time in 2022-23 (especially in the playoffs, where he only appeared in three of the Brooklyn Nets’ 5 games), the brother of the greatest shooter ever, Seth Curry, is now an unrestricted free agent heading into this offseason.
So, should the Pelicans pursue Curry as a potential target in free agency? As we have with our other posts like this, we will leave the salary cap ramifications to the experts and focus on answering this question from a strictly on-court perspective.
Well, for starters, like we said, he is the brother of Stephen Curry. And lo and behold, the shooting gene runs deep in the Curry bloodline. In the last three years, Curry (Seth, that is) is converting on 48% of his wide-open 3-point attempts (per thinkingbasketball.net). That is 97th percentile league-wide during that time.
As we say with all of these breakdowns, the Pelicans’ three biggest areas of need are shooting, rim protection, and rim pressure outside of Williamson. Based on the statistic we referenced above, Curry clearly checks one of those boxes.
With that said, it is going to be tricky to have him play significant playoff minutes because of his defense. Last season, he was in the 9th percentile (-1.9) in Defensive Estimated Plus-Minus (per Dunks & Threes). That was a big reason why he only played in three of the Nets’ five playoff games this postseason.
You can play poor defenders in the playoffs if you have good defensive infrastructure around them. But for the Pelicans, if they already have Williamson and McCollum on the floor, it is going to be tricky to add Curry to that mix and still be respectable on that end of the court.
With this said, the Pelicans could still pursue Curry to help bolster their shooting as long as they allocate the proper amount of resources. If they pay him the amount you would pay for a player who will likely see limited minutes in a postseason series, then that is okay. But if they are paying him starter/key bench player money, that probably wouldn’t be the best idea (unless McCollum is no longer on the roster next season, for some reason).
Overall, we will answer this question with the dreaded “it depends!”