With the 2025-26 season officially over for the New Orleans Pelicans, the franchise now enters its second offseason with Joe Dumars as the team's lead decision-maker.
In the 2025 offseason, Dumars and company made their fair share of questionable moves and decisions, and those carried over into this past season, most notably their decision not to be sellers at the trade deadline. Unfortunately, for Pelicans fans, it sounds like things may only get worse, as during his end-of-season media availability, Dumars made a worrisome statement about the futures of Zion Williamson and Derik Queen.
"I always kind of chuckle when I hear people say, 'Well, can they play together?' ...uh, Tatum and Brown like, 'Ah, they can't play.' Like, you got to allow people to grow in this league... I didn't know if I could fit with Isaiah [Thomas] or not, but I knew we both had great IQs and we'd figure it out. And sometimes you got to let players figure it out. It can't just be, 'Well, they can't play together.' "Joe Dumars
In theory, this isn't a bad process, but to anyone who watched the undersized frontcourt of Queen and Zion this season, it was clear there isn’t anything to really buy into long-term with this pair.
Zion and Derik Queen don’t share the same a path to success
This was Zion Williamson's seventh year in New Orleans and was Queen's first. That’s where the first red flag in Dumars’ statement comes in, as they are on completely different timelines. Brown and Tatum were drafted a year apart, so they grew and developed together, and by year four of playing together, they were in the NBA Finals. If Queen and Zion were given that time, DQ would be 25 and Zion would be 30, which doesn't line up.
The second red flag in Dumars’ thinking is that with Tatum and Brown, there was always a clear path to them fitting together, and Queen and Zion don't have that same natural fit.
Both JB and JT can play on the wing, dribble, pass, shoot, and were two-way players, but what really clicked offensively was that they have totally different shot profiles. Tatum is more of a perimeter shot creator, and Brown was an aggressive downhill attacker who loves a midrange jumpshot. With Queen and Zion, not only do they both ideally fit at the power forward spot, but they also are both poor defensively and operate in the same spots offensively.
The modern NBA is all about spacing, size, and defending, all three things that Queen and Zion struggle with. Having one player who doesn't have incredible size or an outside shot or is elite defensively is fine, and teams can still win by building around one of those guys, but two? That’s not going to happen. I understand the idea of letting players develop and grow on-court chemistry, but the issue with DQ and Zion isn't about chemistry—it's that, stylistically, they don't complement one another, even a little bit.
The Pelicans entered the offseason with a clear path to a bright future: move on from the Zion era and fully commit to Derik Queen and Jeremiah Fears. But, before that ball even got rolling, Dumars has put his foot down and is investing in an idea so flawed it doesn’t even feel real.
Add us as a preferred source on Google