The Zion Williamson Problem
The 2024-25 New Orleans Pelicans are awful.
Nobody expected the New Orleans Pelicans to have been as atrocious as they are now at the start of the season. Take one look at the roster and you see three all-star capable players (Brandon Ingram, Dejounte Murray, Zion Williamson). You see these guys along with the multitude of good players surrounding them and they should be a surefire playoff team... right? Hell, they were a 49-win team last season, this should be an easy task!
Incorrect. As a matter of fact, the Pelicans are one of the worst teams in the current NBA landscape as of the time of this writing.
Ask your average NBA fan and they will tell you it is because of injuries. Of course, New Orleans was decimated by the bug to start the year; at the worst of it, 8 players were inactive due to injury. While yes, you can attribute most of the reason on that problem, however, there are many underlying issues that also contribute to the disaster that is the 2024-25 Pelicans.
To sum it up, it has been disappointing... but how did it end up this way? How did a team that looked so promising end up here?
Failure of Zion Williamson
Towards the middle of the 2018-19 NBA season, Pelicans franchise player Anthony Davis demanded to be traded out of the city. While this should have been devastating for New Orleans, they ended up lucking out in the lottery and landed the #1 overall pick in the upcoming draft.
Even more lucky for them, it gave them the opportunity to draft one of the most hyped up, generational prospect talents since LeBron James; Zion Williamson.
To say Zion Williamson was great in college is an understatement, he was absolutely dominant. The fact that the Pelicans would be able to draft him and move on from their star player that no longer wanted to play for them seemed like a blessing in disguise.
As expected, the Pelicans flipped Anthony Davis for Brandon Ingram, Lonzo Ball, and Josh Hart amongst other assets and picked Zion Williamson #1 overall in the 2019 NBA Draft.
A new era was in the play for the Pelicans. With a newfound young core, they were poised to reach a contending spot in the Western Conference within a couple of years.
Unfortunately, this was not the case.
Almost six years later, the Pelicans are a bottomfeeder in the West. While they showed many promising seasons, they either choked up in the Play-In Tournament or were knocked out in the Playoffs in the First Round.
This mainly has to be attributed to the availability of Zion Williamson. It's no secret that Zion is one of the most injury-prone stars in the NBA. Whether you blame it on bad luck or diet, he has simply not been able to play when he's needed most.
Of all 448 possible games Zion could've played in, he has only played in 191. That is over half of his potential career missed. Just absolutely abysmal.
Zion has missed an entire season due to injury, two seasons with less than 30 games played, and he has missed a sizable chunk of this season as well. Along with this, Zion has never been available for a playoff game in his career.
When Zion is on the floor, there's no doubt that he has a large impact. He is a two-time All-Star and averaged 27 points in only his second season.
He is the star New Orleans needs, but he never shows up to save the day.
The Failure to Build Around Zion
The Pelicans brought in David Griffin at the end of the 2019 season to shift the tides of a team that has only seen disappointment since moving from Charlotte.
As stated earlier, his first moves were to flip Anthony Davis and flip Zion. While the Anthony Davis deal has remained largely positive for the Pelicans, there have been a plethora of questionable roster-building choices the Pelicans have made.
In the same class New Orleans drafted Zion Williamson in, the Pelicans selected Jaxson Hayes with the 8th overall pick. Long story short, he was a massive failure.
The Pelicans moved on from Jrue Holiday following the bubble and traded him for Eric Bledsoe. Unexpectedly, Eric Bledsoe fell off a cliff and became awful while Jrue Holiday is celebrating his twilight years with two rings. Go figure.
The same year, Derrick Favors and Steven Adams were acquired to bolster the big man department. They were both one-year rentals. Thankfully, they were able to get Jonas Valanciunas out of it.
After only two seasons, Lonzo Ball, one of the main pieces of the Anthony Davis trade, had already moved on from New Orleans. They had chosen to not match the offer Chicago gave him and instead signed Devonte Graham to try and fill the gap. Hilarious.
Now we enter the big trades. The first big deal the Pelicans made in the Zion era was trading for long-time Portland Trail Blazer C. J. McCollum. It was a good deal at the time, he helped lead a Pelicans team (WITHOUT Zion) to a playoff spot. They were even able to stay competitive with the Suns, the Finals runner-up from the year before, for six games.
Now, it has become a disaster. While C.J. McCollum is still a good scorer, he has become extremely inconsistent and is among the worst defensive guards in the NBA. Did I mention he's making $33 million a year?
Now, Dejounte Murray. In the midst of this offseason, the Pelicans made a marquee move, trading for Hawks star Dejounte Murray. The package didn't look awful either, just Dyson Daniels, Larry Nance, and a couple of picks. What could go wrong from a low risk, high reward trade? Everything, as it seems.
Dejounte Murray since his injury is one of the most inefficient high volume scorers in the NBA. To say many wins were lost because Murray couldn't hold his own would be accurate.
In Atlanta, meanwhile, Dyson Daniels is thriving. He has proved himself to be one of, if not the best defensive guard in the NBA, once he was given a situation to go wild in.
In my eyes, the Dejounte Murray deal has portrayed everything wrong with the current day Pelicans. Making the wrong decisions at the wrong times, not allowing the players they already have to shine; and once they do get the opportunity to leave and find a new situation, they overperform. We have seen this with Josh Hart, we have seen it with Jrue Holiday, we have seen it with Nickeil Alexander-Walker, and now we are seeing it with Dyson Daniels.
You can only imagine how fans of this team feel.
Failure of the Coaching Staff
This is arguably the biggest problem the Pelicans organization has faced even before Zion. They cannot find a great coach for the life of them. Never.
After multiple disappointing seasons with the team, the Pelicans moved on from Alvin Gentry following Zion's rookie season. Who did they hire to replace him, you might ask? Stan Van Gundy. While Stan Van Gundy has been around the NBA landscape for a long time, he was never really considered a great or even good coach.
The 2020-21 New Orleans Pelicans were a massive disappointment. Despite Zion Williamson playing a healthy season, and having two scorers above 20 PPG, they missed the playoffs entirely.
Stan Van Gundy was fired after one season. Now we enter the dumpster fire of Willie Green. Willie Green was the assistant coach of the Suns when the Pelicans, under the tree of the notoriously great head coach Monty Williams. While the first couple of seasons looked decent for Green, there were signs from the start that his coaching ability may have been exorbitated by his roster.
In 2025, it's safe to say Green is a horrible head coach. He seems lost without his star players, not knowing what to do. Not knowing how to adapt. Questionable lineups and defensive blunders have been plenty this season. He has allowed runs to go on for long periods of time without calling timeouts, it looks like he has no idea how to run a basketball team.
It's an absolute disaster.
What the Pelicans Can Do From Here
Despite being in an awful situation, there are a couple things the Pelicans can do to try and relieve themselves from it.
The most obvious call is to trade their stars, clean house, and start a total rebuild. While this is extreme, it may not be a bad decision at this time. It's not like a team full of scrubs would be worse than what the Pelicans are now.
Another option, and my personal choice would be to still try and build around Zion, but with a new core and coaching staff. Brandon Ingram is on the last year of his contract and it's basically guaranteed he won't return to the team after the season. Flip him for assets, let McCollum walk and free agency, pray for good luck in the draft lottery, and try it again.
It's time for change in New Orleans.