The New Orleans Pelicans have accepted their dismal fate for this cursed 2024-25 NBA season. They came into the year with lofty expectations after getting the healthiest campaign of Zion Williamson's career last season, getting Big Z to buy in and slim down over the summer, and trading for All-Star point guard Dejounte Murray at the top of the offseason.
Unfortunately, things didn't play out the way they hoped, as the injury bug came back for the Pelicans with a vengeance, infecting practically the entirety of their roster and ending their playoff hopes just a quarter of the way into the season. Now, New Orleans is committed to tanking the rest of the season and rebuilding their roster around their young prospects along with whatever draft pick they land this summer.
In order to fully reset their team, though, they'll have their work cut out for them before this season's trade deadline. The Pelicans are absolutely loaded with high-quality veterans which gives them plenty of ammunition to gather young players and draft capital in deals, but it also means they have to be active in order to clear their roster to make way for the next era. This year's trade season looks like it'll revolved around Jimmy Butler and where the Miami Heat will send him, and the rest of the teams will have to deal with the fallout. The Pelicans will especially be tied to the Heat and what they decided to do with Butler.
Brandon Ingram may be a consolation prize for teams that strike out on Jimmy Butler
It was always expected that the Pelicans would be looking to trade Brandon Ingram this season. That became even more evident when the team entered the new season without signing him to a contract extension, which meant that he would become an unrestricted free agent at the end of the league year.
Unless they traded him before the February deadline or inked him to a new contract before June 30, the Pelicans are at risk of losing Ingram in free agency with nothing in return. With the team clearly disinterested in retaining him long-term, especially now that they're looking at a rebuild, the Pelicans have no choice but to find a deal for him before the trade deadline.
There have been a few teams rumored to be interested in his talents. The Sacramento Kings reportedly considered trading for Ingram before they ultimately decided to fire former Head Coach Mike Brown instead. The Denver Nuggets may wind up swapping Michael Porter Jr. for BI. The Los Angeles Lakers were commonly linked to Ingram before they dropped out of pursuit earlier this year.
So far, though, there haven't been any concrete rumblings of a potential deal. That might be because the league is still waiting to see where Jimmy Butler ends up before anyone's willing to make a major move.
HoopsHype's Michael Scotto reported that the two wings actually have the same suitors:
"Currently, teams who’ve been monitoring Miami’s Jimmy Butler are also keeping tabs on Ingram with five weeks until the trade deadline."
The Heat and their president Pat Riley have been playing hardball, with Riley coming out and stating that Jimmy would explicitly not be traded this season. However, he could simply be driving up the price, as Butler has reportedly told the Heat that he has no interest in re-signing with them, putting Miami in the same precarious situation that the Pelicans are in with Ingram in which they're at risk to lose a star player and valuable asset for nothing. If the Heat don't trade Butler this season, he could opt out of his player option for next year and sign with a new team in free agency.
That detail should keep Butler's suitors in hot pursuit. It appears that the Pelicans will have to wait for the Butler situation to play out before they're able to make a deal involving Ingram, unless they go out and construct a deal themselves that would find new homes for both Butler and Ingram. It seems that New Orleans will have to wait on a team to either strike out on Butler or give up the chase for him before they're able to trade Ingram, though.