re: Hollinger's Pelicans Preview

Wow, so much wrongness in one paragraph it's kind of impressive.

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the odd part is that adding Williamson doesn’t change much about the fundamental strengths and weaknesses of this team; he mostly doubles down on what’s already there. The Pelicans were already deep at forward; Williamson plays the four.

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That's not odd, you just have some weird vendetta against the Pels that keeps you from being objective. Having a top 5 player is never redundant unless we're talking about olympic teams.

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The Pelicans were already light on shooting; Williamson can’t shoot.

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This is going to be proven so wrong it's not even funny. Trey and CJ would be enough to flip things from last year's bad shooting, but you also should see rebounds from 3 for BI and Devonte.

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most importantly, the Pelicans were already suspect on defense, and Williamson, for all his offensive talent, has been consistently awful on that end in his brief career.

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Hollinger is supposed to be an advanced stats guru, how he misses on this so badly is just sad. I'm going to predict something pretty unusual but not unprecedented. The Pels are going to have an above average defense (14th or better in DRtg), but the starting 5 will be a few points below that level. Basically the bench defense with Jose, Dyson and Trey will be so good that it will lead to the Pels having a good defense overall. Kind of like how Asik helped push those Bulls teams to a top 5 defense in a bench role.