Well, here we are, one year into the Joe Dumars era. How are we all feeling? Angry? Hopeless? Confused? These are all perfectly reasonable ways to feel after the last year with Dumars as the Pelicans’ President of Basketball Operations. Believe it or not, it could have been a lot worse.
The NBA Hall of Famer started off by hiring Troy Weaver to be his right-hand man and Pelicans general manager. This move was almost as widely panned as Dumars’ hiring. Weaver was the Detroit Pistons general manager from 2020 to 2024 before becoming a senior advisor for the Washington Wizards. The consensus was that Weaver wasn’t very good in either role. Not a great start.
The deal that broke Pelicans fans
The New Orleans Pelicans then traded their unprotected 2026 first-round pick (this is very bad) and the No. 23 pick in the 2025 draft to the Atlanta Hawks for the 13th pick in the 2025 draft, which the Pelicans used to select Derik Queen.
There is no way to justify the Pelicans trading their unprotected 2026 first-round pick. It looked like, for a good portion of the season, that pick could end up being in the top three of an insanely talented draft.
Currently, the Hawks have the seventh pick in the draft. If this holds after the draft lottery, I personally will feel a little better about this trade. Missing out on a top three or even top five pick would have hurt. Seventh isn’t great, but it’s a little easier to digest.
The other part of this trade that has worked out so far for the Pelicans is that Queen looks like he will be a very good player. Can you imagine if Queen stunk this past season? Queen having a great rookie season and looking like a potential building block makes what is still a bad trade much less terrible.
Why stop at one bad trade when you can make two?
Now let’s take a closer look at another big trade that Dumars and Weaver pulled off last offseason. The New Orleans Pelicans traded CJ McCollum, Kelly Olynyk, and a future second-round pick to the Washington Wizards for Jordan Poole, Saddiq Bey, and Micah Peavy.
I have no problem with the Pelicans trading away Olynyk, a second-round pick, or even McCollum. The issue I have with this trade is Jordan Poole.
I’m not going to sugarcoat this. I think Jordan Poole is a super-talented offensive player but a terrible team player. The Pelicans paid Poole over $31 million to sit on the bench last season and still owe him $34 million next season. This is not good.
Enter Saddiq Bey who had a career year with the Pelicans. He was one of the team’s lone bright spots. Even better, Bey has a very team-friendly contract. Add to that Micah Peavy looks like he could be a solid bench player, and suddenly, this trade doesn’t look so bad.
Finally, before I give Dumars a grade, I want to highlight a couple of other deals the Pelicans made that were really good moves. In addition to drafting Queen, the Pelicans selected Jeremiah Fears with the seventh pick in the 2025 draft. Fears has shown a lot of potential and could be a very good point guard.
The Pelicans also made an under-the-radar move by signing DeAndre Jordan. It was a minor transaction that helped the Pelicans greatly. Jordan proved to be a very valuable teammate and mentor on a young Pelicans team. He even won the NBA’s Teammate of the Year Award.
Of course, we still have a long way to go before we can give the ultimate judgment on Dumars’ moves this past year. But what first appeared to be awful deals now don’t look so bad. I know fans aren’t happy with Dumars, and I do believe there will be more moves this offseason that make fans pull their hair out, but I will give him a C- grade for this first year in charge of the Pelicans.
If that Hawks pick ends up winning the draft lottery, I reserve the right to change this grade to an F-.
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