re: Zion's bubble injury kept secret from team(coaches)?

@ the full on melt. This is such a toxic fanbase that thrives on unsubstantiated rumors. It's comical.

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Putting Steven Adams next to Zion wasn't just a bad move, its a total misunderstanding of what NBA basketball is in 2021

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They didn't trade for Adams for his "fit" imo, they traded for Adams for his mentorship, which Jax said last season helped him tremendously and was a big reason for his great play post-ASB.

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And unless Valanciunas turns into Brook Lopez, we just tripled down on another terrible fit at center next to Zion

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Val is not a bad fit next to Z.

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Its even worse because Dell gifted them the perfect stretch center and they dumped him to keep Jahlil Okafor.

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This has been covered ad-nauseum, Wood did not want to be here.

There's a really weird disconnect between people acknowledging Griffin's been bad at his job, but being unwilling to admit any individual move was bad. Pick any Griffin transaction and people will defend it to the death.

They'll call for Langdon to replace him, then go to war with national guys in his defense.

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And if Adams was that critical to Hayes, we wouldn’t have paid to get off of him

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We didn't, we paid a 1st to dump Bledsoe. The trade back was to get Valanciunas who at this stage is better, in a swap for Adams.

The Griff haters won't talk about our draft picks, because they don't want to talk about how great they have been.

It's intellectually dishonest.

Not sure if anyone has talked about it yet, but the Lowe Post has a big Pelicans segment today with Andrew Lopez. I haven’t finished listening yet, but they are not as negative about the article and situation as some others are. Zach starts off saying most of the stuff was from the first year in the bubble, and calls much of it “old news“ (but still relevant). He also mentions that some of the sources might no longer be with the team and expressing “sour grapes.“ Apparently Bobby Marks was on the podcast not too long ago and thinks there is no way that Zion signs the QO (both Andrew and Zach believe it is unlikely but possible that he signs the QO). Andrew Lopez talked about Willie Green impressing in summer league, and believes the most important thing this season is how Willie connects with Zion and BI. Andrew seems to think that Zion‘s biggest frustration was the “bursts,” and while he and Zach understand Zion’s frustration, they both believe the organization did the right thing in being cautious with his health. Andrew Lopez mentioned how the Pelicans were one of the best in the league last season in minutes lost due to injury, and how Aaron Nelson‘s approach seems to be working.

Like I said, I haven’t finished the podcast yet. I don’t think there’s anything new or groundbreaking, but it’s refreshing to hear it take on the organization and the article that isn’t all doom and gloom.

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The Griff haters won't talk about our draft picks, because they don't want to talk about how great they have been.

It's intellectually dishonest.

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Ok, let’s talk!

Jaxson and NAW are still TBD but I’m hoping to eat crow and signals are positive.

Murphy is nice, but again, he hasn’t even played an NBA game yet.

Zion is a gimme and crediting him for that would be actual intellectual dishonesty.

So not bad, but three seasons in and we’re still waiting on the first class of players to be net positive impact guys.

But none of those players are what I would call franchise altering picks at this point, or expect to be(maybe Hayes, MAYBE, if he literally takes an AD like leap in his development).

Furthermore, it’s basically what Trajan was brought in for. Something tells me the quality of our draft picks would not materially change if Griff was fired and Trajan and the rest of the staff remained. So the argument doesn’t exactly hold a ton of weight with me.

And TBC I’m not 100% out on Griff, but if I’m grading his first 3 seasons across all aspects of team building, it’s between a D+ and a C+. And that doesn’t cut it as a small market in this league.

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it’s refreshing to hear it take on the organization and the article that isn’t all doom and gloom.

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Jake did a "reasons for optimism" show today, if you want some more of that.

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He was extremely confused about our roster last year and pretty much called all of our issues before the season started and was dead accurate.

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Yep. And he really likes the roster this year. I just listen to the rest of the podcast. It was actually really great. They talk about everyone on the roster. Zach thinks BI has another level, they both think NAW has good potential on defense and offense, have heard good things about Jaxson’s shot and newfound work ethic, like Trey, find Herb really intriguing, like Naji, etc.

It was obvious last year that the roster had issues before the season even started. This year, on paper, the offense doesn’t seem to have any huge obvious problems. Defense might be another story, but as they talked about in the podcast, our defense got way better after we moved away from the Bucks scheme.

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Jake did a "reasons for optimism" show today, if you want some more of that.

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Awesome. I’ll give that a listen. Thanks for the heads up.

I think Griff has made 2 major mistakes since taking over the Pelicans.

First, and I know I am in the minority, his handling of the Zion knee injury was terrible. They waited to have the surgery done, then held him out for at least a month longer than needed. Then, the “burst” minutes was the catalyst for where we are. There is absolutely zero scientific data to support that was the right move to have such rigid restrictions. I said it when it was happening that it was not handled well and I thought it would lead to problems. I understand that they had conditioning concerns but the communication with Zion and his camp wasn’t great and the organization is still trying to recover.

Second, the hiring of Van Gundy was terrible. If it wasn’t bad enough that he lost his roster because his coach was so out of touch, it was unforgivable that he hired a coach that had such a different vision than he did for the way to success. Knowing what we know now, that was an arrangement that had zero chance to work from day 1.

Obviously there were other mistakes, but every gm is going to have some misses. The only reasons I am not 100% out on Griff are I feel winning can cure his first mistake. It has now been 2 years since Zion’s rookie season and those hard feeing will disappear if we win. He also cut bait with Van Gundy and gave the organization a new direction. The success of the Green hire and their on court record this year will determine Griff’s fate. We will have a pretty good idea which way we are headed by January.