Let's start by saying that John Hollinger gets a lot of stuff wrong.

With that out of the way, I always appreciate his opinion, because there are few people with his resume who study the league and give expert, objective views.

He's been doing season previews for all 30 teams, and the Pels' preview dropped today. LINK

The TLDR is that he picks us to finish 6th in the West, which I think most of us would agree is reasonable. Since the article sits behind a paywall at The Athletic, I'll provide some extensive exerpts.

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Williamson looked bouncy and svelte in preseason, but he has only played 85 games in his three pro seasons. With one of the most unusual body-athleticism combos in league annals, it remains to be seen whether his lower extremities can handle the forces placed on them night after night.

Williamson, undoubtedly, raises this team’s ceiling substantially. In his All-Star season in 2020-21, he took nearly 12 shots a game at the rim and made 70 percent of them.

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

Two moves in 2021-22 at least helped balance out the equation. The first was the theft of Herb Jones with the 35th pick in the 2021 draft. He proved to be an elite on-ball defender right out of the chute and was one of the only three players to have both steal and block rates above 2.5 percent (joining Matisse Thybulle and Robert Covington). To a lesser extent, the late addition to the rotation of 6-foot pest Jose Alvarado also juiced the defense (plus, watching him was just fun as hell).

The other big decision was the trade for CJ McCollum, which reoriented the roster to add more shooting, and cost a future first and a future second. The Pelicans sent out a good player (Josh Hart) who had a much more favorable contract than McCollum’s three-year, $100 million pact (which now has two years left and was recently extended for another two). Thus, the net effect of this was to give the Pels a short-term upgrade in perimeter shooting at the cost of a lot of future flexibility. We’ll talk more about that in a bit.

The Pels also got a pleasant surprise when their moves cost significantly less draft capital than first imagined. The Los Angeles Lakers’ demise nuked the cost of the Steven Adams-Jonas Valanciunas trade; the top-10 protection on that deal meant the Pelicans got to keep the eighth pick. Meanwhile, making the playoffs sent a first to Charlotte from the Devonte’ Graham trade (yeah, about that…) and kicked a future first from the Milwaukee Bucks to Portland for McCollum.

[Stuff about possible future salary cap problems and skepticism about the CJ extension]

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The bigger reason not to lock in, however, is that the Pelicans don’t really know what they have yet. Does it work with Williamson playing next to fellow masher Valanciunas? Can they guard anybody lining up this way, or do they need to make a trade for a more versatile, switchable center? Where does Ingram’s game fit in next to Williamson? Do they need a real point guard, or can they get by with a McCollum/Ingram/Zion committee approach? If not, is Daniels that point guard? Meanwhile, they also extended Nance Jr., but can he stay healthy? He’s played 81 total games over the past two seasons and has never played more than 67 in a season.

The Pelicans essentially locked in this group as if they were the 2018 Golden State Warriors, a premature victory lap for a roster they haven’t seen on the court. They already painted themselves into this corner once by rushing to extend Adams before realizing he didn’t quite fit and may have done so again.

[Stuff about how we still have flexibility, though, because we have picks we can use to make trades.]

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Regardless of what the expensive guys do, however, the Pelicans have another layer of excitement this season with their youth contingent. Jones is already a locked-in starter; he’ll need to keep developing his shooting to play next to Williamson, but his defense is essential. Alvarado was an incredible find as an undrafted two-way; like Williamson, he needs to convince defenses he can shoot, but few are better at pressuring the ball (or hiding in the corner after a made basket). Murphy, a summer-league Hall of Famer, shot 38.2 percent from 3 in his rookie year; if he ever makes a shot inside the arc, the Pels will have a nice combo forward off the bench.

But the real pearl here may be Daniels. He’s a big guard who can defend one through three, he’s a good ballhandler and passer and a plus athlete, and the pre-draft background on him was excellent. He’s 19 and still needs work — he was an average-to-good player in the G League last season but hardly dominant — so his impact may not be felt for a while. He also has one big question mark: shooting. However, the Pelicans are fortunate to employ perhaps the best shooting coach in the league in Fred Vinson.

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As for 2022-23, the upside is undeniable; if Williamson stays healthy and everything clicks, this team could brute-force its way to 55 wins, a la last year’s Grizzlies. But abundant questions remain — about health, about shooting, about defense. There are too many lineups with three non-shooters and little defensive switchability.

Relative to the last few years, that result still should be a successful season. It’s hard to imagine this team failing to win half its games, which would be its first winning season in five years and only the third since Chris Paul left in 2011. Whatever Williamson’s health turns out to be, he’ll play more games than he did last season, when the team was already pretty good by the end of the year. The overall youth of the roster should be a wind at their backs as well.

On paper, there are eight clear playoff-caliber teams in the West, and this is one of them. There’s a lot of variance in this estimate and some questions about what this looks like going forward, but for 2022-23, the median outcome looks pretty good.

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Prediction: 48-34, sixth in Western Conference