30 teams, 30 days: New Orleans Pelicans | 2027 Season Preview

Welcome to the 4th edition of my annual 30 teams in 30 days series, the most comprehensive and informative previews for every team in the NBA. Inside these posts, you’ll get up to speed with every team’s offseason additions and their roster hierarchies, learn whether they’ve addressed their biggest areas of need, ponder over 5 questions that will define their season and then decide whether you agree with my offseason grades and record predictions. For the first time, these articles will be exclusively posted on the Hardwood Collective and are paired with video deep-dives over on my Youtube and full-length podcast episodes over on The Fifth Factor!

Notable Additions: Trendon Watford, DeAndre Jordan (re-signed), Jaron Pierre, Jr., Malik Dia, Caleb Houstan, Christian Koloko, Kobe Bufkin, Bennedict Mathurin, A.J. Johnson

Draft Pick Comps & Strengths + Weaknesses

#58: Jaron Pierre
Pierre was relatively effective relative to his offensive load but not convinced he has the skillset/frame to scale down. It's promising that he remained just as effective in the ACC as he was in CUSA, the issue is his level of effectiveness wasn’t overwhelmingly impressive at either level.

Undrafted: Malik Dia
Hasn’t demonstrated much of a NBA skill beyond the defensive rebounding and didn't reach my draftable threshold in his final NCAA year to even be considered in the model output on my site.

Notable Subtractions: Kevon Looney, Hunter Dickinson, Trey Alexander, Josh Oduro, Jordan Hawkins, Micah Peavy

Depth Chart + Roster Hierarchy

Franchise — Zion Williamson

Core — Trey Murphy III, Jeremiah Fears, Derik Queen

Key Rotation — Herbert Jones, Dejounte Murray, Yves Missi, Bennedict Mathurin, Saddiq Bey

Rotation — Jordan Poole, DeAndre Jordan, Bryce McGowens, Trendon Watford, Karlo Matković

Development — A.J. Johnson, Jaron Pierre Jr. , Malik Dia

Cap Sheet:

Offseason Overview:

Throughout their 20 or so years of existence, the Pelicans have had an unbelievably tough time avoiding injuries. Now whether that attrition is a product of bad voodoo, an outright hex on the team or sharing medical staff with the Saints is up for debate, but it's clear that something just isn't quite right in New Orleans. In the last 3 years, New Orleans has lost 753 games to player injury, slightly above the average games lost among teams. However, they lost the 2nd most value relative to contract over that same span, constantly suiting up without their best players. This track record is what made last year's health such an overwhelming outlier.

Through February 26th, the Pels miraculously ranked just 20th in Estimated Wins Missed. Even with this uncharacteristically strong streak of health that included Zion playing his most minutes in 2 years, New Orleans was sitting at 14th in the West with a 18-42 record. Their heavy investments in Fears & Queen during the 2025 draft had led them to stubbornly start their rookies, even if it came at the cost of sacrificing the integrity of the lineup as a whole. Players struggling in their 1st year is nothing new, but the extent and fashion in which Fears & Queen floundered throughout their introduction to the league was far from inspiring. It took removing both of them from the starting lineup shortly after the All-Star Break for the Pels to produce something that even came close to resembling competitive basketball, producing their only > .500 stretch of the season over that span.

The conundrum the Pels have placed themselves in was both avoidable and predictable. While it's understandable that they were enamored with both Fears and Queen, they also very clearly have a desire to win now, which is completely incongruent with the amount of draft equity they committed on players who never projected as immediate contributors. To make matters even worse, Queen and Zion proved to be one of the worst redundancies in the entire league last year! There wasn't a single duo outside of UTA/WAS who played this much together while losing their minutes by such a huge margin. Instead of deciding on a direction, New Orleans sat put all offseason, with their biggest splash being hiring Jamahl Mosley as their new head coach.

Pre-Draft Areas of Need:

🥇 Offensive Creativity: T10 in Iso, Post-Up & Handoff Frequency, below average in Spot-Ups, Cuts & Off-Screen Poss

Not Addressed: Mosley doesn’t have the strongest rep for building creative offenses, but he’s also never had a roster geared towards that side of the ball. This Pels roster is a bit jumbled as well and had far too many creation possessions that didn’t feature Zion (he had his lowest Creation volume season of his career).

🥈 Defensive Rebounding: B2B years in the bottom 3 in opp OREB% ( 31.3%, 28th)

Partially Addressed: No Looney is a big loss on the glass, but Dejounte/Fears are pretty strong rebounders for their position and Queen was decent as a rookie. However, they will regularly field lineups where 4/5 guys are several degrees below average in terms of DREB equity

🥉 Rim Protection: 17th in Rim FG% Allowed, 22nd in Blk REC% (55.93%), 6th in goaltending Violations per 100

Not Addressed: Either Yves Missi makes a defensive leap or Herb is healthy/plays enough to make a dent in the Pels issues on D, no additions are coming in to save them

Season Outlook:

1) What’s the ideal deployment/role for Zion?

It's unfortunate that the foremost discourse surrounding Zion has been either focused on his availability issues or off-court scandals, as even with all the missed games, he's simply been one of the most transcendent offensive talents this league has ever been blessed with. Williamson has so much versatility in both his arsenal and methods of creating an advantage, which is even more impressive considering he usually takes nearly 70% of his shots at the rim. Throughout his 7 NBA years, Zion has individual seasons where he has ranked as a T10 postup scorer (based on Points Over Expectation ^[1]) plus instances scoring on putbacks, cuts, in transition and in isolation. He's functioned as "Point Zion", initiating the offense from the top of the key with the 5th largest isolation share in the league. He feasted with a higher % of his looks coming as a play-finisher, leading the league in 2P FGM and posting 99th%ile efficiency (+8.1 rTS%). This past season, in one of the roughest contexts ever, he accepted the lowest creation reps of his career and responded by ranking in the T20 in POE on Iso, P&R Handler, Transition, Cuts AND Roll-Man possessions.

I really can't stress enough how rare it is for a player with Zion's shot diet to be this multifaceted offensively. He can morph himself into whatever his team needs from him on a possession by possession basis on the offensive end of the floor, though the best results — both for NOP and in terms of individual production — certainly came with him on the ball. There should be no question about his ability to do so, but it is fair to speculate whether his body can handle that much torque and offensive load. If this reduction in on-ball reps can continue to keep him on the floor for more games, the tradeoff is overwhelmingly worth it.

2) Can Jamahl Mosley exhibit more offensive creativity than he was able to showcase in Orlando?

Last season, the Pels ranked 7th in Iso Freq., 17th in P&R Freq , 10th in Post-Up Freq. (4.0%), 22nd in Spot-Up Frequency (22.3%), 10th in Handoff Freq. (5.1%), 15th in Cut Freq (6.6%), 24th in Off-Screen Freq. (2.6%). They had a 41.8 rim frequency, the highest team rim rate since the 21 Pelicans, which drove their league-leading loc eFG%. This is a stellar example of the difference between shot profile efficiency based on FGA location and true shot quality, as the vast majority of these makes were unassisted.

6 Pelicans averaged at least 1 isolation FGA per game last year, joining Miami and Philly as the only teams in the league to democratize their isolation creation to this extent. Unlike Miami and Philly though, this team didn't feature 3 All-Stars or play an up-tempo, "Wheel" offense like Miami that farmed mismatches in the half-court. 3 of New Orleans' qualified players were 40th%ile or worse in isolation PPP, and it's hard to envision what serious team would ask Saddiq Bey and Trey Murphy III to create their own shot so frequently.

In his 5 years as Orlando's head coach, the Magic's defense was as consistently good as the offense was consistently poor. ORL finished bottom 5 in ORTG in 3 of the 5 years, including a 2025 campaign that ended with the Magic posting the worst relative 3P shooting season since "The Process" Sixers in 2014, sho0ting 4.1% points WORSE than league average from three. Their HC offense was characterized by a high rim rate and offensive rebound rate, though it's tough to parse how much of Mosley's offensive approach was determined by the limited personnel he was given to work with. However, I've spent the past couple seasons truly perplexed as to why ORL refused to push the pace more often to compensate for their shooting issues, how they continually gave their best perimeter creator progressively less time on the ball and rarely used Paolo as a screener. Considering the Pels' roster is comprised of some ill-fitting pieces with some spacing concerns and his history as a culture-setting defensive first coach, I don't have super high hopes for the scheme improving massively.

3) Can any combos of Dejounte Murray, Jordan Poole and Jeremiah Fears co-exist?

Jordan Poole found himself getting coach decision DNPs shortly after the calendar turned to January, falling out of the rotation almost entirely by the end of the year. As an expiring contract with a history of contributing to a contender, it would be shrewd of New Orleans to dangle his deal as a potential avenue to cap relief for a team who wants to bet that Poole can bounce back from career lows as a 2P scorer and at the FT line. Funny enough, New Orleans complicated the backcourt rotation in the same way they added Queen, sending CJ to the Wizards in return for Bey & Poole less than a month after drafting Fears.^[2] Even considering how poorly Jordan played last year, he's still their best OTD 3-point shooter, a scary proposition since it's not viable for him to play next to Fears, who will probably start and play 30+ minutes a night.

Dejounte is the only way I can see New Orleans fielding lineups with 2 point guards. His defense has slipped a considerable amount since his years in San Antonio and there isn't a frontcourt pairing that can help compensate, but he's by far their best rebounder and has the most size. Mosley didn't play any of the the traditional PGs together in Orlando, though he did pair Jalen Suggs + Anthony Black and Cole Anthony + Suggs together for a decent portion of their minutes.

4) How will the FO clear the positional log-jam in the frontcourt & backcourt?

The one benefit of completely running a team back that won just 26 games last year is that if New Orleans gets the same result with a different coach, it'll be hard to delude themselves into continuing down the path this roster is currently walking. The pieces they need to make decisions on are clear, who ends up going it really depends on what direction they end up taking based on how this team looks at the deadline. Poole is 100% the odd-man out in the guard room, with Nola all-in on Fears & investing some precious 2nds in the Mathurin acquistion. His contract is also the most tradeable and I can see it being packaged with another contract to add a higher-ticket player to the roster.

In the frontcourt, Herb Jones, Trey Murphy and Zion Williamson have been the subject of trade talks for what feels like decades, especially Trey Murphy. Considering we're in Y4 of these rumors and they've yet to move him, there must be a massive gap between how much New Orleans values him relative to what the league is willing to pay, so it feels like he'll finish this season in New Orleans. I think it would take a godfather offer to get them to trade Zion as well, but Herb could be available if they end up shrinking his role a bit.

5) Will NOP be able to foster a consistent enough offensive ecosystem for Herb Jones to bounce back?

Herbert Jones has had back to back rough offensive seasons, ranking in the 8th percentile in relative true shooting his past season. He's been a great example of the absolute floor of a low usage inefficient offensive player can reach in terms of traditional production when the surrounding infrastructure fails, but even with his shot completely deserting him, he's continued to win his minutes better than any other Pelican. As their best defender by several magnitudes, Herb juices New Orleans' transition offense significantly, which prevents NOP from constantly having to attack a set defense while he's on the floor. He's been every bit as effective defensively that he was early in his career and only accounts for 9% of the cap this year before peaking at 12% in 2030, which is fantastic value for a guy with a truly irreplaceable skillset.

No matter what direction they take, whether they blow it up or try to contend, they're going to need Herb and he may be their most attractive asset to a team trying to upgrade their rotation at the deadline. If Dejounte, Trey & Zion are all able to play 50+ games, there may be enough raw offensive talent to see an uptick in Herb's offense, which would allow New Orleans to justify a higher asking price. If he continues to struggle though, I can only imagine how many teams will try to take advantage of the jumbled rotations in New Orleans to place Herb in much better context and reap the benefits, similar to how Caruso got right back to championship-level basketball in OKC.

Record Prediction

Combined Odds: 28.0 via multiple sportbooks

My Model Projection: 33.6 (23rd of 30), -2.49 Net Rating, 7% playoff odds

Floor: 20-62 (-6 wins)

The most crucial elements to establishing a competitive floor are health and defense, especially defensive rebounding. There are more than a few realities where the Pels are beset once more with a litany of injuries, commit to playing lineups that don’t feature enough connective tissue and/or competent defenders & find themselves as one of the worst teams, if not the worst, in the league.

Ceiling: 38-44 (+12 wins)

If New Orleans gets another 60 games of Zion and Mosley plays Herb + Saddiq at least a combined 40+ minutes a game, I can envision a team that has enough reliable contributors to challenge for a Play-In spot.

Overall Grade: D

Let me know if you agree with my predictions! What are your expectations for the Pelicans this season?

Up Next: Philadelphia 76ers