Sons,

If you're like me, you're probably a combination of not just a Pels fan, but a Saints/LSU fan as well.

And it has sucked donkey dick to be a fan of those two teams. Today I am going to do my best to tell you what the Pels are shaping up to be this year.

Pels Strengths: We're going to be fast. Like fast fast for a Willie team. With Ingram and CJ gone, theres going to be less ball stopping players on this team. I'm excited to see what Poole can bring as a pure scorer (hopefully a younger version of CJ with a little more defensive improvement). He's still only 26 years old.

We're also going into a season with a best shape of his pro life Zion. Yes, he's also going to be in the weakness column, but after the 234th injury due to him being fat, he's finally decided enough is enough and put down the twinkies and picked up the lettuce wraps. There's no denying that he looks like an entirely different player. And when he's on the court and right he's absolutely unstoppable.

Trey Murphy is also a year older, and he looks to improve not only his ball handling capabilities, but with Murray out until at least late December/early January, taking over as the initiator on offense. A Zion/Murphy PnR sounds deadly when Poole is hanging around the 3pt line right? I'd love to see what 3 man games we can work with those guys all being at the rim finishers.

Yves Missi, for better and worse, also looks to improve upon his surprising rookie campaign as he's going to be starting for at least the first few weeks of the season. Yes, he's weak as a rim protector, but there's no doubting his ability to change a shots direction and be a garbage man cleaning up misses at the rim.

And don't forget about Herb fricking Jones. Preseason shooting woes aside, lets not forget the last fully healthy season saw him shooting well from 3 and playing all nba defense. He's going to be asked to take on a little bit more of the offensive load (hopefully not too much). Hopefully not too much more because....

Pels Weaknesses: We might be really really bad on defense. I don't think we're going to see a top 10 Willie Green defense like we've seen in the past seasons, and a lot of it is going to be due to our inability to rebound and stop the ball at the rim. Looney was expected to do some of that, but the Pels don't have great defenders in 3/5 starting positions. With Looney out that makes it 4/5. You have a lot of energy guys off the bench in Jose and Bey and that can make some defensive plays, but you lack a lot of defensive big depth and outside of Herb no true elite defenders. That may change with Zion over time, but he's going to be asked to do a lot on offense and has been known to take plays off on d.

Season Outlook: Who the frick knows. There's a lot of uncertainty around this years team. Is skinny Zion going to play 65 plus games? I'm bullish enough on the other guys to say we make the play-in at worst if that happens. There's a lot of offensive talent on this team, and adding a 75% Murray off the bench as a table setter for the 2nd team will only make us better. Its just going to depend on that dirty fricking word every Pels fan hates to hear: Health.

Get ready to flap motherfrickers because we're beating those frickboys in Memphis game one and its gonna be on.

This post was edited on 10/20/25 at 7:34 pm