In sports, we love to do this thing where we determine how good a player is by counting the number of championships they win. And since Anthony Davis couldn’t win a championship as the number one guy with the New Orleans Pelicans, some people take that as a sign that he can’t be the best player on a championship team.
But at the end of the day, basketball is a team game. And for years, the Pelicans failed to surround Davis with the talent necessary for him to guide them to a championship. You don’t believe us? Then why don’t we just take a trip down memory lane and take a look back at some of the worst starters of the Davis era. Maybe then you will believe that it wasn’t Davis’ fault. Now, without further ado, here are the ten worst starters of the Davis era.
(Sidebar: For the sake of this list, to qualify as a “starter,” the player must have started at least 20 games for the Pelicans during the Davis era.)
10. Jahlil Okafor – 33 Games Started, -1.1 Box Plus-Minus as a Pelican
You may remember Jahlil Okafor as the Duke superstar who flamed out after being selected third overall in the draft by the Philadelphia 76ers. After failing in Philadelphia and a stop with the Brooklyn Nets, Okafor ended up with the Pelicans.
He spent two seasons in New Orleans, appearing in 89 games and starting in 33 of them. He actually wasn’t terrible during his time with the team. In both his seasons, his true shooting was well above the league average. However, in both seasons, his Box Plus-Minus (BPM) which is just not something you want from someone you are relying on to start games, especially not when you are trying to build a winner around Davis.
9. Brian Roberts – 47 Games Started, -1.2 Box Plus-Minus as a Pelican
Point Guard Brian Roberts spent the first two seasons of his career with the Pelicans. During that time, he started 47 games with the team. If you look at the standard box score numbers and some advanced measures, you will see some nice stuff as it pertains to his offense.
For instance, he shot 35.6% on his threes and 90.8% on his free throws during his time as a Pelican. Those are strong indicators that he’s a pretty good shooter. On top of that, he ranked in the 75th percentile in Passer Rating, and 87th percentile in Box Creation in 2013-14 (per thinkingbasketball.net). For those wondering, Passer Rating estimates a player’s passing ability and Box Creation estimates playmaking ability. So, Roberts can shoot and pass.
However, at 6’1 and only 170 pounds, Roberts didn’t exactly have the body to mime Jrue Holiday’s impact on defense. During his time with New Orleans, he posted a Defensive Box Plus-Minus (DBPM) of -1.5.
Guards are typically your worst defenders, but the Pelicans were especially bad when Roberts was on the floor. In 2012-13, the Pelicans were 2.9 points worse on defense when Roberts was on the floor (24th percentile, per Cleaning the Glass). Maybe you can live with a backup who is okay on offense and horrible on defense. But having a starter with that skill set is far from optimal.
8. Greg Stiemsma – 20 Games Started, -1.7 Box Plus-Minus as a Pelican
With 20 career starts as a New Orleans Pelican under his belt, Greg Stiemsma barely meets the criteria necessary to be a part of our list. However, what he lacked in sample size, he made up for in on-court production (or lack thereof).
In his 20 games as a starter, Stiemsma averaged 2.9 PPG, 3.9 RPG, and 0.7 APG in 18.6 minutes of action. The Pelicans were 6-14 in those games.
We know that Davis doesn’t like playing center, but does playing alongside a big man who averages just three points a game when he starts really do it for him?
The thing is, Stiemsma was actually a pretty solid defender. In 2013-14 (his lone season with the Pelicans), he averaged a block percentage of 4.7% and a DBPM of +1.9.
However, the offense was so bad that it wiped everything he did on defense out. In 2013-14, his Offensive Box Plus-Minus (OBPM) was a -3.6, which is actually higher than his career average of -4.3. Here’s something even more disturbing. The Pelicans were ten points worse on offense when Stiemsma was on the floor. That ranked in the sixth percentile among centers (per Cleaning the Glass).
He’s not higher on this list because he only started 20 games with the team, so the damage he did to the organization during the Davis era was minimal.
7. Tim Frazier – 53 Games Started, -1.7 Box Plus-Minus as a Pelican
Remember a couple of slides ago when we gave you the book on Brian Roberts? Well, take all that, make it a little bit worse, and you have Tim Frazier during his time with the Pelicans.
We said that Roberts was a solid offensive point guard who was awful on defense. Frazier was also a poor defender. But on top of that, he wasn’t the offensive player that Roberts was.
Roberts was a 35.6% 3-point shooter. Meanwhile, Frazier was a 33.9% 3-point shooter during his time with the Pelicans. Roberts was a 90.8% free-throw shooter. Frazier was just a 76.4% free throw shooter (remember, free throw shooting is a great context-independent measure of shooting). Overall, Frazier’s career OBPM with the Pelicans was a -1.4, a far cry from the 0.3 OBPM Roberts posted during his time with the career.
Davis is a defensive juggernaut. So, you can afford to sacrifice defense at the guard position for more offense. However, with Frazier, you aren’t getting the defense or offense component. On top of that, he started more games than anyone we’ve talked about before him. That’s a recipe for the seventh spot on our countdown.
6. Alonzo Gee – 38 Games Started, -2.6 Box Plus-Minus as a Pelican
Okay, you have to admit that the teaser for this slide was pretty clever. But in all seriousness, Alonzo Gee spent his lone season with New Orleans starting 38 games and not leaving much of a positive imprint in the process.
During his first season with the Los Angeles Lakers, Davis’ starting small forward (you may have heard the name LeBron James) averaged 25.3 PPG, 10.2 APG, and 7.8 RPG. And guess what? Davis was able to win an NBA title with a small forward like that flanking him.
Guess what Gee averaged during the 38 games he started for the Pelicans? In 24.7 minutes per game, Gee averaged 4.8 PPG, 1.2 APG, and 3.2 RPG. Do you know what the Pelicans’ record was in that season (2015-16)? They finished 12th in the Western Conference with a 30-52 record.
Everyone is always talking about how you need a two-way forward on your roster to make a deep playoff run. Gee’s box score statistics show that he is far from that ideal. On top of that, he had a Stiemsma-ian OBPM of -3.2. When you see that, it makes sense that Gee was out of the league after the 2016-17 season (one year after his stint with New Orleans).
And Stiemsma, the reason Gee isn’t even higher on this list is that he only started 38 games for the Pelicans.
5. Jason Smith – 27 Games Started, -2.4 Box Plus-Minus as a Pelican
I feel like sometimes people laugh at Davis’ desire to play the power forward. Like, why would a guy that big, who can’t shoot threes that well, be so fixated on the idea of playing the four? However, don’t forget that, once upon a time, the San Antonio Spurs played Hall of Famer Tim Duncan at the four, with fellow Hall of Famer David Robinson playing alongside him at the center. Together, the two formed a defensive dynasty, the likes of which we have seldom seen before.
The thing is, if you pay attention throughout history, any time you play a double center lineup like that, you are automatically going to juice your defense. What made the Duncan/Robinson duo so special is that they could juice your defense and provide an offensive punch with their passing and low post-scoring.
That is not what happened when Davis and Jason Smith shared the court together. According to PBP Stats, during Davis’ tenure, the New Orleans Twin Towers (I’m sorry I even called them that as a joke) played 501 minutes together. In that stretch, the team had a defensive rating of 105.66.
That’s pretty impressive, especially given that they played together right around the start of the pace and space explosion. However, the downside is they sacrificed a ton on offense. In those 501 minutes, their offensive rating was just a 105.42. That means that, despite their defensive splendor, they still had a Net Rating of -0.24.
All of that lies squarely on the shoulders of, you guessed it, Smith. During his time in New Orleans, he was far from the Robinson to Davis’ Duncan. In totality, Smith averaged 7.2 PPG, 0.7 APG, and an OBPM of -2.0 during his five seasons with the Pelicans (with his best seasons coming before Davis’ arrival).
The reason Smith ranks this high on the list is that he started more games than Stiemsma (27 to 20) and posted a lower BPM (-2.4 to -1.7).
4. Alexis Ajinça – 70 Games Started, -2.4 Box Plus-Minus as a Pelican
Okay, so picture this. With Alexis Ajinca, we have pretty much the exact same argument we had for Stiemsma and Smith, but a worse version of it. And one that includes more starts in a Pelicans uniform.
Unlike Davis and Smith, who had a 105.66 defensive rating when they shared the court, Ajinca and Davis allowed 108 points per 100 possessions in the 1,158 minutes they played together. Meanwhile, their offensive rating was virtually the same (105.51). All this adds up to a Net Rating of -2.49. That puts the Pelicans at an expected win pace of 34 games during an 82-game season.
I know your heart didn’t need to hear this, but when Duncan and Robinson shared the floor from 2000-03, they had a Net Rating of 11.78 (5,191 minutes). That’s an expected win pace of 70 games during an 82-game season.
Listen, we aren’t asking that they be at Duncan and Robinson’s level. Few tandems in NBA history are. But they are so far removed from that standard that it isn’t even funny at this point. And the worst part is that on his lonesome, Davis is in the same category as those watchful protectors. That means that the responsibility for this disparity lies squarely on Ajinca’s shoulders.
One last thing to add to all of this is that Ajinca’s offensive outputs were even worse than Smith’s. In 222 games, he averaged 6 PPG, 0.6 APG, and an OBPM of -2.5. After he was done with the Pelicans, Ajinca never played NBA basketball again.
3. Dante Cunningham – 132 Games Started, -2.4 Box Plus-Minus as a Pelican
As the old adage goes, “Hindsight is 20/20.” But even with that bias in mind, why on Earth did Dante Cunningham need to start 132 games for the Pelicans?
You can’t hit me with the double big lineup to juice your defense argument. Cunningham was a forward, so he doesn’t fall under this category. You can’t tell me that he was there for spacing purposes – 34.5% 3-point shooting on 1.8 attempts per game during his time as a Pelican is hardly what you would consider a spacer.
And you sure as hell can’t tell me that this was the Pelicans’ attempt to flank Davis with the two-way forward he needed to make a deep playoff run in New Orleans. In 263 total games with the team, Cunningham averaged 5.7 PPG, 3.7 RPG, 0.7 APG, 0.6 SPG, and 0.4 BPG in 24.3 minutes of action per night. On top of that, he had an OBPM of -2.3 and an overall BPM of -2.3 (meaning he hardly contributed anything on defense).
What we have here is a super-charged version of what we saw with Gee earlier. A player playing a position where two-way value is a must for contenders, yet Cunningham didn’t seem to contribute any positive value on either end of the court. At least not enough to warrant starter-level minutes.
You could make an argument that in terms of pure talent Cunningham was better than Gee during their respective times with the team. But the fact that he started nearly 3.5 times more games than Gee earns him his place on our list.
2. Omer Asik – 159 Games Started, -2.5 Box Plus-Minus as a Pelican
A common theme of these rankings is us dinging the Pelicans for fielding two types of player archetypes next to Davis in the starting lineup. The first is the archetype of the center who – thanks to their size and strength – provides some defensive value. However, that defensive value isn’t nearly worth enough to make up for their complete lack of offense.
And arguably no player epitomizes that player type more during the Davis era than Omer Asik. So, why is it that Asik gets the highest ranking of all the no offense centers Davis had the privilege of starting next to?
First, as we’ve been citing for our entire countdown, Asik started the most games during the Davis era. Therefore, he theoretically did the most damage. Second, his BPM was the worst of all of them. As you can see in bold above, Asik had a BPM of -2.5, which is the highest of any player we’ve seen so far outside of Gee.
Third, he didn’t even do the defense part of his job all that well. His DBPM was a -0.8 during his time with the team. That means he was a negative on both offense and defense.
And last, but certainly not least, is the contract. After one season in New Orleans (by far his best with the team), the organization decided it was a good idea to sign him to a 5-year, 58-million-dollar deal in the summer of 2015. To their credit, none of the guys before him on this list was getting paid this much to tank Davis’ chances of winning a title in New Orleans.
1. Solomon Hill – 87 Games Started, -3.0 Box Plus-Minus as a Pelican
The other type of archetype we’ve been penalizing the most severely is the no-way wings/forwards that New Orleans had the inclination toward starting, and in Solomon Hill’s case, offering large chunks of cash to (more on that in just a second).
We can’t fully say that Hill was a no-way forward. In his three seasons with New Orleans, his DBPM was a 0.5. How much of that was influenced by him playing next to a defensive anchor in Davis? Probably a ton. But at the end of the day, he was still a positive there.
What killed the team was his offense. He may have been a positive on defense, but his offense was so bad (-3.5 OBPM) that it led to him having, by far and away, the worst overall BPM of any of the players on this list (-3.0 BPM).
This is especially damaging because the Pelicans needed their non-bigs to carry the load for them on offense since they were sacrificing offense at the center position to field more defense. On top of that, since Hill isn’t a center, he inherently can’t provide as much defensive punch as guys like Asik, Ajinca, and Smith.
On top of that, there is the contract. New Orleans snagged Hill from the Indiana Pacers in free agency by offering him a 4-year, 52-million-dollar deal. That’s an even higher annual rate than Asik. And it came during the dreaded summer of 2016 (the summer where seemingly every team handed out abhorrent contracts), so it hurts even more.