3 New Orleans Pelicans whose role will increase next season

1. Herbert Jones

Speaking of defense, the New Orleans Pelicans are going to need Herbert Jones to channel the absolute best version of his ‘Not on Herb’ persona. Williamson is a great player. But as of right now, he’s a pretty weak defender. That means you’ll want the other four players surrounding him to be strong defenders.

Normally, one of those strong defenders will be your team’s center. However, Jonas Valanciunas isn’t a very good defender (relative to his position). Meanwhile, Larry Nance Jr. (because of his injury history) isn’t someone who can handle a boatload of minutes, and Cody Zeller isn’t someone you want to hand a boatload of minutes to.

Since New Orleans (as currently constructed) doesn’t really have a center to anchor their defense, they will need to lean extra hard on guys like Jones to carry the show. We’ve talked about this before, but there is a reasonable chance that the Pelicans experiment with a Jones/Williamson/Brandon Ingram/CJ McCollum/Trey Murphy III lineup.

If something like that happens, it will be up to Jones to not only be the group’s best perimeter defender. But he’s also going to have to crash the glass, as he’ll be the unit’s de facto small-ball five.

At the end of the day, you want to play your best players as much as possible. Jones is one of the Pelicans’ very best players, so it makes sense that the team will field lineups that will get him the most minutes possible. And since most of their other best players are more offensively-slanted, that will likely mean that Jones will need to evolve his role from pure perimeter stopper to true defensive anchor.