538: How the Pelicans Lost a Star but Became More Dangerous

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The Mirotic-Davis pairing is one the Pelicans are looking forward to based on the vast success it had toward the tail end of last season, when the team’s net rating with Davis on the court went from plus-3.8 per 100 possessions without Mirotic to plus-10.3 per 100 possessions with him. 1 For some context, Davis and Cousins together produced a net rating of plus-4.2 in 2017-18, which was a decent improvement from the plus-2.5 they logged the season before.

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Boogie’s inside-out game is something that few players in the league can replicate. Still, the Pelicans likely will benefit by moving on from him. First, it’s unclear when, or in what condition, he will return. But on the floor, New Orleans figures to save a handful of possessions a game without him: Cousins turned the ball over five times a night, which was the highest rate in the league — more than either James Harden or Russell Westbrook, who in 2016-17 rewrote the NBA record books with how many miscues they committed. (At 6.7 giveaways per 100 possessions, Cousins lost the ball more than the next two-highest rotation Pellies in usage — Davis and Holiday — did combined last year, per Basketball-Reference.com.)

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Beyond that, the club signed former Laker forward Julius Randle, who’s capable of plugging some of the gaps that Cousins left behind. By no means is he the shooter that Cousins is, but he’ll almost certainly fit the team’s uptempo style far better. Randle is highly aggressive in transition, often calling his own number after grabbing a defensive rebound and taking possessions coast to coast in a matter of seconds. Only a handful of elite players — Kevin Durant, LeBron James, Giannis Antetokounmpo and DeMar DeRozan — have scored more efficiently 2 in the first seven seconds of a transition possession, 3 according to data from Second Spectrum.

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But if there’s a ceiling on these Pelicans, and there still seems to be one, it’s that their arms can stretch only so far when trying to contest a Durant fall-away jumper. And until New Orleans acquires a couple of wing stoppers the way Houston did last season, a team like the Warriors will likely continue to give the Pelicans headaches come postseason

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