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Saturday 18 January 2020 20:56, UK
The New Orleans Pelicans have a mouldable young core, experienced veterans and, with the imminent return of Zion Williamson, a talent infusion that could propel them to the West’s final playoff seed. How will they balance their short- and long-term goals over the second half of the season?
For many years, the strength in depth of the NBA's Western Conference has been vaunted, especially when compared to the relatively uncompetitive Eastern Conference. This year, though, the West has been much more tiered.
Out in front by far are LeBron James's Los Angeles Lakers, four-and-a-half games ahead of the Denver Nuggets in second place. Tier two is much tighter; only two-and-a-half games separate Denver from sixth-placed Dallas Mavericks, then there is another gap of three games to the surprising Oklahoma City Thunder in seventh.
The eighth seed currently, however, belongs to a team with only a 19-22 record - the streaking Memphis Grizzlies, winners of six games in a row.
Considering that two years ago, the Nuggets missed the playoffs with a 48-34 record, it can be seen how the West does not have the strength in depth that it did in the recent past. At least one sub- or barely-.500 team is going to make it to the postseason this year.
Between the provisional eighth seed and the Sacramento Kings down in 14th (15-26), there is only four games' difference in the win column. Only the Golden State Warriors are out of it, far adrift at 9-33 - everyone else in that pile can, in theory, make the playoffs this season.
And now that we are halfway through the season, they all need to decide whether they want to.
One such team is the New Orleans Pelicans, who have a 16-26 record but are improving. After finally ending an ugly 13-game losing streak, the Pelicans have looked much improved in the time hence, winners of nine of their next 13 games, with wins in that time over the Nuggets and Houston Rockets.
To be sure, with most of their wins coming against fellow lottery opposition, they are still several tiers below competitiveness. But with Zion Williamson, future NBA star and the foundation of the franchise, to return to action next week, they are about to get a talent infusion that none of the others in the chasing pack can boast.
The question now will be what they should do with it.
Considering that making the eighth seed likely means facing a Lakers team that has been fairly dominant thus far this season, making the playoffs as a low seed is unlikely to mean making any inroads beyond the first round. You do have to be in it to win it, of course, but the disparity between first versus eighth every season is fairly substantial and will be so again this year.
Only once has an eighth seed made the NBA Finals - the 1999 New York Knicks, as the league lacked for quality in the post-Michael Jordan vacuum - and only five times has the eighth seed won their first-round series. It is very unlikely that this would be the sixth time.
The value in making the playoffs, however, goes beyond potentially winning any games. As long as a franchise has positioned itself with its long-term interests as the priority, and not sacrificed any important strategic positioning to be overly urgent in the pursuit of immediate term mediocrity, making them is an important milestone in the development of a young team. It is, after all, an early taste of success.
As we looked at immediately after the last NBA Draft, the Pelicans, like the Grizzlies, transformed the prognosis of their franchise that night. Where previously both had been floating in the mid-range without paths to levelling up, nor the young pieces to improve much from within, picking first and second that night along with a slew of good trades saw both come out as two of the more exciting franchises in the NBA.
Where once there were only dreams, there became hope, legitimate hope, and the creation of cores with upside not seen in some years.
Life is not binary. The ultimate aim is to win a championship, of course, but in a world where all outcomes short of that are to be deemed unsatisfactory, the product suffers. There are steps in the process and targets to be hit along the way.
The first step is to acquire enough quality mouldable young talent that, with the right collection of commensurate pieces around them, could form the core of a contending team. With Zion, Jaxson Hayes, Nickeil Alexander-Walker, Brandon Ingram and Lonzo Ball all acquired over the past summer, the Pelicans have already done enough to consider moving on to step two.
Step two is to instill the infrastructure, principles and style of play best suited to this core and to playing competitive basketball down the road. And the best way to enact a step two is to strike the right balance between these self-same young players and quality veterans who know what they are doing.
If a team is oversaturated with young players without the high IQ veterans to guide them, they will suffer for it. Having veterans on the bench who can advise from there is one thing, but having those still good enough to play rotation minutes is far better - the young playmakers will better understand spacing, timing and game management if their shooters and cutters already know how and when to get open, for example.
Similarly, having a balance of quality veterans who are still hungry for their next contract, but who also have the opportunity to play productive heady basketball on an upstart team that now draws plenty of eyes, will mean they are engaged within a team concept, and the team will be better for it.
Conversely, if a team is oversaturated with these hungry veterans, then it becomes likely that not everyone is on the same page. Think of it as the difference between this year's New York Knicks and Atlanta Hawks.
The Knicks are still lacking the core talents required, and are instead loaded up with incompatible veterans on short-term contracts who everyone already knows will not be with the team for long. The Hawks, meanwhile, with very few veteran contributors and thus an over-reliance on Trae Young, are no better off by going that route; while it is good to remove all barriers to Young's playing time, not having anyone out there who can help him manage things means the Hawks as constructed are just as bad as the Knicks.
Balance between the two is key, and in already having fringe All-Star Jrue Holiday on the team, plus the additions of young-veteran Derrick Favors and veteran-veteran JJ Redick this summer, the Pelicans have three quality veterans good enough to be part of the core going forward - and two of them young enough as well - that also play styles conducive to the success of the young players they are accommodating.
Redick's off-ball movement and shooting is hugely valuable to a playmaker like Ingram, who wants to drive, while Favors' abilities to roll, spot and defend whoever is the primary interior option for the opposition will allow Zion, once healthy, to go to work in his favourite areas.
In also having an excellently versatile guard like Holiday - who plays both ends, both guard positions, both on and off the ball, and who does everything extremely well - the Pelicans are finding they can win a decent number of games already.
The NBA Draft vehicle perversely rewards losses by giving bad teams the better draft picks that makes step one possible. In that respect, stacking up losses has its merits. Yet all players must play to win, and all coaches must coach to win. If they are not trying to do so, then they are in the wrong job.
Not wanting to win is anathema to professional sport. And notwithstanding the need to make certain moves to acquire assets, if the front office is not on the same page as that, it must be discomforting. It surely undercuts the message of the importance of trying to win, and the selling of the product to the fan base, if the braintrust does not actually want to win.
By not tanking, though, the Pelicans are not risking this discord. Instead, with the exception of NBA rookie/EuroLeague veteran Nicolo Melli - who sources say is frustrated at his lack of game time - the Pelicans are playing to win. In doing so, they make the product more attractive, the chemistry on the court better, the groundswell of hope more vivid, and the environment for the development of the important youngsters far stronger.
The flip side to this is that, if the Pelicans continue to eke out as many wins as they can and potentially make the postseason, they will keep Favors and Redick, who both have expiring contracts. Despite how much progress they made towards the aforementioned step one this summer, the Pelicans like any team could stand to benefit from having more assets to work with, and if they do not trade their quality veterans for anything in return, they lose the ability to do that.
The key in this season's second half, then, is to find a balance between pushing on with a genuinely hopeful season, or playing the long game and getting something for their tradable commodities.
Would you rather be an up-and-comer or an also-ran? The former, of course. And greater assets mean a greater chance of that. At the same time, playoff experience, even in losses, is key to player development, and the Pelicans have a chance at potentially getting some of them.
Would the 2014-2019 Golden State Warriors have been as good as they were had they not had an initial taste of playoff experience in 2013-14? Probably not.
You should not expect to go from famine to feast in one fell swoop. Sometimes, the experience of a nice meal will do.
