It's official: Derik Queen will don the number 22 for the New Orleans Pelicans next season. The team will undoubtedly prioritize the former Maryland Terrapins' big man as a key part of their future, considering how much they invested initially to bring him to the Big Easy.
In order to move up to 13 to take him in the draft, the Pelicans and their president of basketball operations, Joe Dumars, traded the number 23 pick (Asa Newell out of Georgia) and a 2026 unprotected first-round selection to the Atlanta Hawks. This deal was widely panned by fans, analysts, and even rival executives across the league.
Of course, it's impossible to fully judge the trade right now. There's no telling what Derik Queen will become in the NBA. Should he go on to earn All-Star and All-NBA nominations, no one will care what New Orleans gave up to get him. Similarly, if the pick the Pelicans gave up in 2026 ends up being the number one pick in the draft next year, Queen might never reach the heights necessary to scrub the tarnish that'll forever be attached to the deal then. For now, anyone grading the trade can only go off the perceived value coming in and going out for the Pelicans, and we've gotten some conflicting reports on that so far.
Joe Dumars refutes report that he could have gotten a top-five pick in 2025 NBA Draft instead
There has been no shortage of criticism for the Pelicans' daring trade to move up and draft Derik Queen. Even those who are fans of Queen's game and his potential fit in New Orleans have condemned the deal, claiming that Joe Dumars was fleeced by the Atlanta Hawks and gave up far too much to move up from 23 to 13.
According to The Athletic's John Hollinger, some rival executives were claiming that Dumars could have used that same package — pick 23 and the unprotected 2026 first — to jump into the top five of this past draft, which would have enabled him to grab VJ Edgecombe, Kon Knueppel, Ace Bailey, or even Dylan Harper, if the San Antonio Spurs were included.
Considering the Pelicans' reported interest in Ace Bailey, that would have been a terrible blunder by Dumars if the claim is true. It's not entirely inconceivable, either. There were quite a few analysts who strongly believed that this was a two-player draft and that the prospects after Cooper Flagg and Dylan Harper weren't as great as advertised. There were also plenty of reports that teams in the top five were looking to move either up, down, or both.
But Joe Dumars recently shot down the claim that he could've landed a top-five pick instead of number 13 at his press conference:
"After we drafted at seven, we started from nine and went all the way until we got a deal... When you identify a player that you think 'this can be one of the foundations here,' you go and get him, and that's what we did."
While he didn't say that he directly tried to trade into the top five with the Queen package, if the Pelicans weren't able to get nine, 10, 11, or 12, they probably weren't jumping to five or higher. Ultimately, though, the last part of that quote is what really matters. New Orleans and Joe Dumars believe that Derik Queen will be a cornerstone for the team moving forward, and they did what they felt was necessary to get him. Now, it's on him and the team to prove Dumars right and the naysayers wrong.