New Orleans Pelicans Can Be Summed Up With This Word After Media Day

How did one NBA expert sum up the New Orleans Pelicans media day to kick off training camp in 2024?

Sep 30, 2024; New Orleans, LA, USA; New Orleans Pelicans guard/forward Herb Jones (2), guard/forward Trey Murphy III (25), forward Brandon Ingram (14) and forward Zion Williamson (1) take part in Pelicans Media Day at the Smoothie King Center. / Matthew Hinton-Imagn Images

For several reasons, the New Orleans Pelicans are a team that people were interested in during media day to kick off training camp this year.

This is a very talented roster that has been constructed, but it will be interesting to see how everything comes together. Head coach Willie Green is going to have some difficult decisions to make with his lineup.

He has opted to use a traditional big man during his tenure as head coach, always willing to sacrifice a little bit of offense if it meant having a stout defensive game plan.

Will that kind of approach be feasible for the 2024-25 campaign? It certainly doesn’t look like it.

Right now, the players atop the depth chart at center are veteran Daniel Theis and rookie Yves Missi.

When taking a look at the roster, it can be argued that neither player is among the eight best players on the team. Can Green afford to start a player at the expense of someone who should be higher in the pecking order?

It is one of the big storylines to keep an eye on, and why Andy Bailey of Bleacher Report selected “small-ball” as the one word to describe the team’s media day.

“Vice president of basketball operations David Griffin told reporters that New Orleans could overcome that deficiency by playing to its strengths. He also mentioned having the right talent on the wings allows a team to play without a big.

Head coach Willie Green added to the discussion, saying he's not committed to starting a traditional center,” Bailey wrote.

The strength of this team is on the perimeter. Brandon Ingram, Herbert Jones and Trey Murphy are as strong of a wing trio as any in the league. Getting those three, along with Dejounte Murray and Zion Williamson, on the court as often as possible should be Green’s goal.

The easiest way to do that is to buck his normal trends and lean into small-ball and positionless basketball.

There are clear risks in such a game plan. That is a severely undersized group, lacking elite positional rebounding or rim protection defensively.

But, they would create some beautiful havoc on both ends of the court. There is enough shooting for Williamson to wreak havoc on the interior offensively.

Defensively, they would be flying around, creating deflections and open-court opportunities with the amount of turnovers that would be forced. Game planning for the versatility of that group would be challenging and potentially enough to offset the clear shortcomings such a five-man lineup presents.