Willie Green needs to learn this job-saving lesson from JJ Redick, Lakers

The New Orleans Pelicans are a lost team desperately searching for answers. Their rotation has been decimated by injuries, with several key members of their core missing multiple games already. Zion Williamson, CJ McCollum, Dejounte Murray, Herb Jones, Jordan Hawkins, and Jose Alvarado will continue to be out for the near future, although CJ may return soon.

They just got Trey Murphy III back, who missed the first few weeks of the season with a hamstring strain suffered at the beginning of the training camp. It would have been tough for any team to navigate a campaign with nearly the entirety of their top eight players out, but the Pelicans have done it as admirably as any franchise could have, managing a 4-10 record so far.

Unfortunately, the standings don't care much about context, nor do NBA executives usually. With New Orleans inching closer and closer to a lost season, Head Coach Willie Green's seat is likely growing hotter, even if there wasn't he could have done with this injury-ridden roster. While the team's health is clearly out of his control, he hasn't been blameless in their poor start. Willie Green still has plenty of time to secure his job, but it'll take some drastic, uncharacteristic changes from him.

JJ Redick has transformed the Lakers; can Willie Green do the same for the Pelicans?

Even when the Pelicans were relatively healthy, they still weren't a good team. In the six games that New Orleans has had both Zion Williamson and Brandon Ingram available, they've gone just 2-4, including two losses against the Golden State Warriors without Stephen Curry and one L against the Portland Trail Blazers.

In year six together, it's only become more evident that Zion and Ingram aren't an ideal pairing. They have too much overlap, as both are point forwards who are at their best on offense operating inside of the arc — attacking the lane for Z and pulling up from midrange for BI. Neither is a good individual defender nor an excellent outside shooter.

While their archetypes aren't complementary, the coaching probably hasn't helped either. The Pelicans reportedly came into the season with a goal to shoot 40 threes per game. They've only managed to hit that number in three games so far this season and are currently 29th in the NBA in 3-point attempts at just 32.1 per game.

The Los Angeles Lakers have faced a similar problem in the LeBron James era. Built around the King and Anthony Davis, two beasts that regularly demolish the paint, LA has had difficulty fielding a modern offense capable of keeping up with the run-and-gun teams of today.

Since LeBron and AD joined forces, the Lakers have only managed a rim-and-three rate of over 71 (where over 71 percent of the team's field-goal attempts came from either 3-pointers or at the rim) twice. One of those times, they won the championship. They also stumbled into a 73.5 rim-and-three rate in the 2021-22 season when Anthony Davis only played 40 games and they wound up missing the playoffs.

Aside from that outlier year, LA's rim-and-three rate has steadily declined since they won the title. This year, JJ Redick has it back up to 72.2, after it fell to just 68.9 last season. A 3.3 percent swing may not seem like a big deal but that translates to about three shots per game for a slower-paced team like the Lakers. That kind of shift could add nine points per game depending on the type of looks they get and whether they go in.

New Orleans has had one of the worst rim-and-three rates in the league during Willie Green's tenure. Their highest mark was 68.2, which came last year. Through their first 14 games this season, they've mustered a rate of just 64.7 according to Cleaning the Glass (subscription required).

Redick was expected to transform the Lakers' offense, and the numbers show that he has. LA has successfully centered Davis in their offense and allowed LeBron to be more of a playmaker in the early season while also increasing their rim-and-three rate, an extremely impressive feat by all means. Redick has also managed this despite deploying virtually the same roster that Darvin Ham had last season.

Redick and the Lakers are proof that one can teach old dogs new tricks in the NBA. Usually, this kind of drastic philosophical shift in a team's identity only comes after a coaching change. For Head Coach Willie Green, he'll have to find a way to modernize the offense lest the New Orleans brass does it for him through a personnel decision.