After a 26-win season, Joe Dumars and Troy Weaver have opted to bring back 14 of 15 players from last year’s New Orleans Pelicans squad. No free agent signings, no big-time trades, no first-round draft picks. However, the lone change is hiring Jamahl Mosley as the franchise's next head coach. For Herb Jones, the lack of change is a blessing, as after a disastrous 2025-26 campaign, he’ll get another chance to prove why the Pelicans didn’t make a mistake extending him last summer.
A lot of things went wrong for the Pelicans last season, and there was a lot of bad. Jones was a big part of that bad, as for the second straight season his production saw a major regression.
Two straight years of regression in your prime is always going to make the future of any player uncertain, and for Jones things don’t look any different. Unless he can stay healthy or get his production back on track, this upcoming season could be his final one as a Pelican.
This is make-or-break time for Herb Jones
Just two years ago, Jones was an All-Defensive first-team member, shooting the three-ball at a 40 percent clip and finishing top five in Defensive Player of the Year. Now he’s coming off a season where he shot 38.3 percent from the field and 30.9 percent from three while averaging below 10 points per game in 56 games. At 27 years old, Jones’ career should be trending upward, not downward.
Obviously, the injury excuse is very much there, as for the last two seasons Jones has dealt with a ton of health issues, but that same excuse can also be flipped into concern. With Jones being such a physical and tough defender who uses his body and size to his fullest advantage defensively, if he continues to have health problems, things will only get worse.Â
The one thing working in Jones' favor is the Mosley hiring, as he is a defensive-minded head coach who has built a reputation for empowering players defensively. For a player with the defensive tools we all know he has, to be paired with a coach like Mosley is a great step toward him potentially returning to that 2023-24 form. But where Mosley can’t really help Jones is offensively, particularly as a floor spacer. What made Jones so valuable a few seasons ago was that he could be a top-five defender in the league while also being reliable from behind the three-point line.
Recently he’s been neither of those things.
It’s fair to assume that nagging shoulder problems likely contributed to the fall of his outside shot from 2023-24 to the last two seasons. And while that is an unfortunate break, if that part of his game doesn’t come back to life, is Jones a player worth a nearly $23 million annual salary like Dumars extended him for? Probably not, making that part of his game more of the make-or-break piece for him going into 2026-27.
Even when he’s not at his best, Jones is still a high-level defender. But without an outside shot, he becomes a negative offensively really quickly and easily could develop into one of the league's worst contracts. If Herb Jones isn’t able to bounce back next season, his time in New Orleans could be coming to a disappointing close.
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