3 New Orleans Pelicans whose role will increase next season
By Mat Issa
2. Dyson Daniels
Despite struggling to get playing time on Team Australia, look for Dyson Daniels to see an increased role in Year Two with the Pelicans. Like Murphy, this one should be a no-brainer. Daniels is a former lottery pick who is heading into his sophomore campaign in the NBA. But just in case that isn’t enough to warrant a larger role, here’s a more on-court explanation.
Williamson, Ingram, and McCollum are all gifted scorers. But none of them are pure point guards. As someone who earned comparisons to Lonzo Ball, Daniels is closer to that ideal.
One of the best publicly-available measures of a player’s passing ability is Ben Taylor’s Passer Rating metric (an estimate of a player’s passing ability on an ‘approximately’ 1-10 scale). Daniels led all Pelicans with a Passer Rating of 8.3. Having him on the floor more will give the Pelicans a more natural distributor next to more score-focused stars like Williamson and Ingram.
On top of that, with Williamson and McCollum playing a large volume of minutes, New Orleans is going to need surround them with defensive-centric role players. Daniels’ best attribute at this point is his merit as a perimeter stopper.
Now, if he can just tap into legendary shooting coach Fred Vinson’s mystical superpowers (remember what he did to Ball’s shot once upon a time?), Daniels can also improve his 3-point proficiency and serve as a credible spacer for the team (Lord knows they need that). If that happens, Daniels could see a similar second-year leap in production to the aforementioned Murphy.