Nate Duncan on Pelicans Team Building Future

I can understand the argument in the OP, but the NBA draft is a crapshoot. We went with proven commodities, and we are hoping to replace that 2nd star player with a handful of good, albeit maybe not great, players.

I'm not upset with the moves we have made at all. Rampant injuries have delayed our opportunities to build solid chemistry, and all these guys are still very young.

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no apparent potential for acquiring a second star to pair with Davis in the foreseeable future.

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Was there ever a realistic path to this though? What guard/wing drafted in the last 2 years has a reasonable chance to be better than Holiday or Evans? Wiggins? What are the chances we'd have beaten out the team that's won the 1st pick 3 of the last 4 years to draft him?

I do agree that we're kind of stuck unless the right disgruntled star opportunity comes along, I just don't see how being stuck with Holiday/Evans is definitely worse than being stuck with Noel/Marcus Smart. If this team is going to get another star it's most likely going to come from continuity and system letting guys maximize the talent they have. Tony Parker is not the most talented guard in the league but he plays like a fringe MVP candidate because he's in a system he knows well that's been built around his skill set.

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no cheap depth

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Cheap Depth =/= Lottery Picks. Cheap Depth = hitting on late 1st and 2nds while you're a strong playoff team. You don't look to draft Reggie Jackson or Corey Joseph at 6 and 10. You'd like to draft good starters like Holiday, Evans and Asik.

I see how another path could have been better in theory, but drafting a #2 is all theoretical, not something that's guaranteed to happen. Same with doing the asset gathering that Houston did. Houston was lucky to have a patient owner and a disgruntled star come available at the right time. There's no guarantee we'd have the right assets or the right disgruntled star or that we wouldn't be outbid by a team like Philly which is currently executing the same asset gathering strategy.

How do you take the assets we have and make them a contender? Does it start with the coach? Do we just need time and in 3 years we'll be legit 8 deep after turning Gordon into a SF and using 2 MLEs?

I have Pelicans' rebuild think piece fatigue.

Whether its praise or hate, I've read this article(basically) so many times over the past 2 years that I don't even care what they say anymore. Every single basketball writer worth anything has written this same article on the Pelicans, at some point.

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What guard/wing drafted in the last 2 years has a reasonable chance to be better than Holiday or Evans? Wiggins? What are the chances we'd have beaten out the team that's won the 1st pick 3 of the last 4 years to draft him?

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His argument is that Holiday, Evans, Gordon make up an average perimeter group, especially when $$ is factored in.

I don't think he's advocating a rookie guard would be better, but that they would be cheaper (allowing for more $$ in the rest of the roster), the room for improvement would be greater, and thus their potential trade value would be more appealing. Certainly you hope a guy turns into a star, but it's not realistic. But trades can always be made. Even a terrible rookie like Anthony Bennett got dumped for a perennial All-Star with a rookie and an expiring vet.

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Cheap Depth =/= Lottery Pick

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Cheap depth right now, spend $$ for other pieces and then see what shakes out as rookies develop over the life of their cost controlled contracts.

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drafting a #2 is all theoretical, not something that's guaranteed to happen. Same with doing the asset gathering that Houston did. Houston was lucky to have a patient owner and a disgruntled star come available at the right time. There's no guarantee we'd have the right assets or the right disgruntled star or that we wouldn't be outbid by a team like Philly which is currently executing the same asset gathering strategy.

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Absolutely right. My biggest problems with what Demps did are a loss of flexibility, detailed by Duncan, and cashing in assets on the wrong player groupings. Doesn't mean it can't work or was a bad idea- sometimes shite just doesn't unfold the way you want.

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How do you take the assets we have and make them a contender?

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$64,000 question. I don't think Duncan is wrong to paint a picture of a team with low seed potential. But I certainly have no answers about what they should have done. And, of course, this is ignoring likely pressure from ownership to contend right away.

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Signing AD's #2 with cap space was never a realistic option.

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More than # 2, it's how I've seen talk here and there about getting a good SF with ~$10M in cap space. That isn't happening in this new market- agents and players know a huge bump is coming

Yeah, I'm tired of the past. Just need to come up with a plan for the future.

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Just think of the possibilities if we can go back in time and plan for the future without EG. We could be going into 2014:

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My point is what the frick difference does it make?

The article isn't really about the past. It's more interested in possible moves to improve the roster with a good look at the cap 2 years down the line.

One possible suggestion: dumping Gordon with the 2016 pick after the draft this summer to create cap space.

Yeah. I've been vocal about giving up the picks to get here, but there is an attractive all in/"damn the torpdoes" logic to doing that move.

Gordon and 2016 for Jeff Green?

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My point is what the frick difference does it make?

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That is the point, its done and over with, and OLD.

I'm tired of people not even giving the 3 players we traded for/signed (Asik, Evans, and Holiday) to play together for a season or two before we judge if it was right or wrong.

Hell, Miami had 3 all-NBA caliber players on one team and took a full year to even mesh.