The New Orleans Pelicans have been decimated by injuries in an all but unprecedented manner. Eight of the team's 10 leading players in minutes per game have missed at least 13 outings of the team's 42 outings in 2024-25, including Brandon Ingram, Herbert Jones, CJ McCollum, Trey Murphy III, Doujante Murray, and Zion Williamson.
It thus comes as no surprise that New Orleans is currently 10-32, sitting at the very bottom of the Western Conference standings.
It's an unfortunate place for New Orleans to find itself when one considers how promising its depth chart appeared to be. A core-four of Ingram, McCollum, Murray, and Williamson was expected to rank among the best in the NBA, with Jose Alvardo, Jordan Hawkins, Jones, and Murphy operating as a tremendous supporting cast.
Questions arose about the lack of depth at center, but with health on their side, the Pelicans were expected to play at a postseason-caliber level until a trade was made mid-season.
For as understandable as falling victim to the injury bug may be, the Pelicans are now faced with a harsh reality they must soon come to terms with. For as unlikely as it is for eight different players to suffer a relatively severe injury within the first half of the season in 2025-26, there's a far more complicated reality taking shape.
Even if the Pelicans manage to avoid the injuries in 2025-26 that have plagued them in 2024-25, they can't afford to simply run it back next season.
New Orleans needs to make a change—but how can it know what to do?
Despite the undeniable collection of talent, burning questions exist throughout New Orleans' rotation. That begins with the fact that Ingram will become an unrestricted free agent this summer, meaning the Pelicans could lose one of their best players without receiving compensation.
Furthermore, McCollum will enter the final season of his contract in 2025-26, giving New Orleans 18 months to make a decision about the 33-year-old's future.
To make matters worse, Williamson has now missed 98 games over the past three seasons. That doesn't include the fact that he was out for the entire 2021-22 campaign or that he was absent from 48 games in 2019-20.
No one will ever question Williamson's talent or capacity for dominance, but as the trade deadline nears, it's fair to question if the Pelicans should continue to make him their top priority.
The most unfortunate truth of all is that the Pelicans will need to carry these burdens and make franchise-altering decisions without a sufficient sample size. Acquiring Murray was meant to put New Orleans over the top, and there's a genuine possibility that a healthy version of this team could, in fact, contend.
With the way that injuries have impacted the Pelicans in 2024-25, however, they simply haven't seen their core spend enough time together to make any informed long-term decisions.
As a result, the Pelicans will approach the trade deadline needing to decide what the 2025-26 team will look like. The easiest choice would be to run it back with the same roster and reevaluate ahead of the 2026 NBA trade deadline, but even that would require a final decision on how Ingram fits.
No matter what the Pelicans do, burning questions will remain. The biggest trade deadline of David Griffin's New Orleans career has arrived.