Still without a head coach and in the midst of an important offseason, David Griffin and the Pelicans’ front office are rolling the dice.
The New Orleans Pelicans are set to enter the second full week of July still without a head coach. As of Friday, 23 days had passed since the Pelicans fired Stan Van Gundy. In a vacuum, that fact would mean very little. Many franchises have more thorough searches for a position as important as the head coach.
But add the context of this Pelicans front office, their recent missteps and the importance of the upcoming offseason and the sense that the franchise is stacking the chips against itself begins to grow.
David Griffin took over in New Orleans at a crucial moment in the franchise. Anthony Davis was on his way out, one way or another, the Pelicans needed to enter a rebuild and at the helm was a long-standing veteran head coach in Alvin Gentry.
Griffin and his front office were handed the golden ticket in Zion Williamson and sucked the Lakers dry of assets to land Davis via trade, but hardly any move after that has gone according to plan. Instead of using the No. 4 overall pick in the draft and taking a player like DeAndre Hunter, who played an impactful, if not heavily abbreviated, role on a Hawks team that made the Eastern Conference Finals, the team opted for more assets via trade with Atlanta to land Jaxson Hayes and Nickeil Alexander-Walker.
The team waived Christian Wood, who would go on to have a breakout season in Detroit and earn a $41 million contract the following offseason, that offseason. Derrick Favors became a stopgap solution at center and JJ Redick was a surprise signing as the team tried to stay competitive.
Neither move helped as the Pelicans again missed the playoffs with Gentry taking the fall as he was fired on August 15. An exhaustive head coaching search saw Stan Van Gundy hired on October 22, seen as the man to take the team to the next level.
Again straddling the line between rebuilding and competing, the team acquired two more veterans in trades, handing an extension to Steven Adams while also taking Eric Bledsoe back in the Jrue Holiday trade. Again, the team failed to make the playoffs, struggling every step of the way of the season.
In a move no one expected, Van Gundy was ousted in mid-June, some eight months after joining the franchise. Days later, a report of an unhappy Zion Williamson should have served as the smelling salts to a staggering front office. Instead, weeks later, interviews have been conducted but all that has amounted to is one of their top candidates, Jacque Vaughn, backing out.
Once more, a lengthy search for a head coach does not mean a front office is without direction or moving in the wrong one. Oftentimes, it means the opposite. But the Pelicans will once again be hiring a head coach that will likely have little input on their draft pick and limited input on free agency.
The latter of those is even more important. New Orleans has a number of difficult and important decisions to make with its roster. If the team hopes to retain Lonzo Ball and Josh Hart, two of the players in the Davis trade, they will need to either enter the luxury tax for the first time in franchise history or shed one of the two players acquired last summer in Adams and Bledsoe.
None of this is to mention the fringe moves that have gone awry. Nicolo Melli was handed a multi-year deal the same summer the team parted with Wood. It never clicked and Melli is out of the league and heading back to Europe after his brief two-season stint.
The franchise seemingly nuked the bridge between itself and Redick, a did potential damage with Creative Artists Agency, midseason by promising the veteran guard a buyout before dealing him in the final moments before the trade deadline mid-season.
All this is being done, now, with a clock ticking in the background on Williamson. After seeing Chris Paul and Davis both force their way out of New Orleans and with the league moving toward a player empowerment era, Williamson’s situation is under a microscope. Transactions will be measured by how it impacts Williamson’s future with the franchise, fair or foul.
Now, each wrong roster move, each day that passes without a coach, each time a coach is sacrificed, another chip is added to the stack. Right now, the stack is growing at an alarming rate.
Perhaps the Pelicans get lucky, land on the right number at the roulette table, the stack cashes out big and the franchise enters a golden generation led by Williamson. Waiting for the right head coach, whether it be Willie Green with the Suns or Charles Lee with the Bucks, would go some way ensuring that future is bright.
But can a franchise with so many miscues in the last two years continue to be given the benefit of the doubt?
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