4 Most underrated players on New Orleans Pelicans current roster

Every NBA team has players that the rest of the league underrates/misunderstands. Let’s face it. With so much basketball to be consumed, no one is watching 82 games of a team that they are not a fan of (unless you are me, and you’re weirdly addicted to mediocre Chicago Bulls basketball).

The New Orleans Pelicans are no different in this regard. For this article, we’ve identified four players on the team’s current roster who are underrated by the rest of the league. The diehard Pelicans fans know how good these players are. But casual fans may be underselling their value toward winning. Now, without further ado, here are the four most underrated Pelicans are their current roster.

4. Naji Marshall

After seeing Caleb Martin help guide the Miami Heat to an NBA Finals appearance, you’d think that people would understand the value of having a wing/forward who plays with confidence and conviction, defends well, and can maintain/capitalize on advantages by putting the ball on the floor.

Marshall brings a lot of the same skills to the table for the Pelicans that Martin brings for the Heat (Martin is the better shooter, though). On top of that, Marshall finished last season in the 73rd percentile in Passer Rating (per Thinking Basketball). On the surface, casual fans may see Marshall as just a defensive-centric energy guy. However, he has a lot more offensive skills than most people think.

The reason he’s not higher on this list is because the gap between where the casuals see him and where he actually is isn’t as severe as some of the other players on this list. Most people likely see him as a fringe rotation piece, whereas he’s actually more of a solid top-8/9 contributor on a good NBA roster.

3. Trey Murphy III

Every fan of New Orleans is ecstatic that the Pelicans were able to land Trey Murphy III with the 17th overall pick in the 2021 NBA Draft. But I bet that, if you ask a lot of fans around the league, many of them would have been happier taking someone like Alperen Sengun at the 16th overall pick. And those people would just be flat-out wrong.

Unlike Sengun, Murphy can move laterally and defend at a high level. On top of that, his skills (outside shooting and vertical play-finishing) fit better next to star players than what Sengun brings to the table (post-scoring and on-ball passing).

Speaking of the Houston Rockets, I bet most people around the league would prefer Jalen Green over Murphy. But guess what? That also shouldn’t be the case either. At this point, Murphy is the better overall player (take a look at their scoring efficiency and impact metrics on defense). And like we alluded to when comparing him to Sengun, Murphy’s skillset is better tailored toward high-end teams.

In fact, outside of the 2021 Rookie of the Year Runner Up Evan Mobley, no player in the 2021 class with over 50 NBA games under their belt has a higher Box Plus-Minus than Murphy (1.0).

This isn’t intended to cast an unnecessary stray at Sengun and Green. They are fine players, both of whom I thoroughly enjoy watching. But so far, Murphy has shown to be one of the most winning players of the 2021 NBA Draft Class, and for some reason, few people outside of the Pelicans fanbase really understand that.

2. Larry Nance Jr.

It’s no secret that the Pelicans struggle to protect the rim. Last season, they allowed the highest opponent field goal percentage at the rim (71.6%, per Cleaning the Glass). And since rim protection is primarily provided by bigs, outsiders might presume that the Pelicans must not have great rim-protecting bigs.

And since rim protection is a big part of what centers do on defense, casual fans might also presume that Larry Nance Jr. isn’t a good defender. But that assumption is dead wrong.

In fact, according to Basketball Index, Nance Jr. experienced the biggest jump in D-LEBRON among bigs last season (as the tweet below demonstrates).

Now, it probably isn’t the best practice to cite a statistic that paints another big you just called a poor defender (Sengun) in a positive light. But there is a lot more to Nance’s case as a good defender than that one simple metric.

For instance, while he isn’t a premier rim protector, Nance is one of the best switch bigs in basketball. According to Basketball Index, Nance was in the 83rd percentile among versatile bigs in time spent guarding point guards in 2022-23 – a great indicator of his positional defensive versatility at the five spot.

And although he’s not blocking a ton of shots relative to his position, Nance does have some great hands. Last season, he ranked in the 92nd percentile in steals among bigs (per Cleaning the Glass). All in all, Nance might not be a traditionally great defensive center, but he’s a much better big defender than non-Pelicans fans give him credit for being.

1. Zion Williamson 

Listen, we’ve heard it all before. Yes, Zion Williamson is dominant when he’s healthy, but he’s never healthy. 

That’s fair. He’s never been healthy (yet). However, even the people that add that caveat don’t fully understand how good a healthy Williamson is. For starters, chew on this: after only playing 29 games last season, Williamson was voted to be a starter in the 2023 NBA All-Star game. Only ten players get to say that in a given season.

While part of the reason he earned that honor was his popularity, most of it was because of his splendor as a basketball player. When Williamson went down on January 2nd, the Pelicans had the eighth-best offensive rating (114.7) and third-best net rating (4.4) in the association. After he went down, the Pelicans were 25th (113.1) and 18th (-0.3) in those categories, respectively. That’s with Brandon Ingram being healthy for most of those non-Williamson games.

That’s monster impact for one man to have on a team. But that’s Williamson for you. The fate of New Orleans’ franchise rests on his broad shoulders, and every Pelicans fan knows it.

Everyone knows that a healthy Williamson is good. However, it feels like most outsiders think that he’s somewhere in the fringe All-NBA category. But people don’t understand that he’s even a notch above that. Healthy Williamson is a one man offense in and of himself. He’s one of the very best players on the planet. And until people start to acknowledge that, he’ll also be the Pelicans most underrated current player.