The duality of the Zion-era Pelicans

A team that is the best in recent franchise history and yet appears to be not good enough to guarantee a playoff bid.

Good morning. Let’s basketball.

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Butterfiles; Odilon Redon; 1910

If there’s a thread linking all recent iterations of the post-Anthony Davis New Orleans Pelicans, it’s that they are rather confounding. Zion Williamson’s stuttering career will do that; in five seasons, he’s played fewer than 30 games three times and damn near made All-NBA his other two seasons. But whether the Pelicans are really good, really bad or in between hasn’t fully relied on Zion’s availability. The Pelicans weren’t good in 2020-21 — Zion’s breakout season — and made or sniffed the playoffs in the lost Zion seasons of 2021-22 and 2022-23.

It was last year that it all purported to come together, with Williamson playing 70 games, experiencing a (basically) full season with C.J. McCollum and Brandon Ingram for the first time. All that ended up with 49 wins — the franchise’s highest win total since 2008-09, the heyday of Chris Paul and David West. 49-33 is an excellent record, below contender status in any context but really strong in a deep West.

For their successes, the Pels lost to the Lakers at home in the first play-in game, beat the Kings in the do-or-die game … and got swept out of the postseason by the young Thunder. Everything — well, as close to everything as the Pelicans seem to be capable of — went right for New Orleans, and it resulted in a first-round sweep.

Since the Hornets moved to Louisiana and birthed the modern Pelicans in 2002, the franchise has won two playoff series. Only three franchises have fewer playoff wins than New Orleans’ 22 wins over those 22 seasons: the Knicks (21, expecting to add a bunch in 2024-25), the Kings (20, just past a 16-year playoff drought) and … the Charlotte Hornets née Bobcats, with three. The Curse of George Shinn is real. The city he jilted has three playoff game wins since getting an expansion franchise 20 years ago. The franchise he moved to NoLa has been only slightly more successful.

(I remained stunned by Charlotte’s three playoff wins since 2004-05. I knew this was a moribund franchise — I’ve been blogging for all but one of their seasons in existence — but the fact that they have been swept in two of the three playoff appearances and went seven in the first round in the other had leeched out of my brain. Good lord.)

Back to the Zion-era Pelicans. This is a good team in practice with real limitations and a steep mountain to climb. In a postmortem after the sweep, the ever-blunt David Griffin signaled that something would need to change. Rumors have swirled around Ingram since the offseason began, with him purportedly looking for a lucrative contract extension that it appears New Orleans isn’t terribly excited about offering. The trade market doesn’t seem to be too hot for Ingram, despite some desperation from certain teams. (Has anyone asked the Hornets if they are interested?)