These playoffs put the Pels in a great position in offseason

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Winning without boogie has put the pelicans in a great position. I think big free agents look at the pelicans and can see they were one big name away from a championship. That being said I don’t believe boogie is that guy. The pelicans have a lot of options including resigning boogie and trading him. Looking forward to the offseason.

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I think in general we are in a good position. Our team has hardly any playoff experience besides Rondo and we swept the three seed. No one is going to be able to compete with GSW until they break it up in a few years. We can spend that time getting more playoff experience, finding a few more pieces on the cheap, and figuring out if it works with Boogie.

Competing for NBA championships are a long haul. Look how long it took the Rockets after getting Harden to make it to this level. You have to be patient.

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Can you explain how the Pelicans can improve without getting into the luxury tax? The luxury cap is projected at $132M next season.

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Trade Ajinca and a 2nd round pick to a team with cap space for nothing in return. Okafor can be cut and owed nothing.
Trade Solo/Diallo/1st for Valentine/Holiday

That saves you $14M
Puts you at around $83M in salaries and 8 players.
Cousins resigns for $30M
Rondo Resigns for $4M
Clark resigns for $2M

that brings you to $119M and 11 spots.
3 more spots to fill. Use the full MLE to sign Trevor Ariza, and two minimum bigs. That would put you around $131 with the $8M MLE and $1.5M for each minimum.

Of course these are all round numbers i'm using and could be off.

Rondo/Clark
Jrue/Justin/Moore/Jackson
Ariza/Valentine/Miller
AD/Mirotic
Cousins/Min/Min

You can always let Miller go if you want to save $2M.

If we could add Valentine, Justin holiday, and Ariza, I would be pumped going into next year. Just adding 2 competent sf's in Valentine and Ariza would be amazing.