The Detroit Pistons eviscerated the New Orleans Pelicans last night in a game that was never close.
The Pelicans displayed a shocking amount of apathy, even for a beat-up team that is tanking, losing by 46 at home and barely registering that they cared.
Everyone got involved for the Pistons, including Simone Fontecchio, who hit 9-of-10 shots including all five of his three-point attempts in a game that will hopefully get him going for the stretch run and playoffs.
Fontecchio had struggled mightily of late, so it was nice for him to see a few go through the net.
I couldn’t help but thinking how far the Pelicans have fallen in recent years, as this was once a team that looked like one of the most promising in the NBA.
After the Anthony Davis trade, the Pelicans had a stacked and balanced roster featuring Zion Williamson, Brandon Ingram, Jrue Holiday, Lonzo Ball, Josh Hart, JJ Redick, Naji Marshall and Nickeil Alexander-Walker to go along with a treasure chest of draft picks that rivaled OKC’s.
Of that group, only Zion Williamson remains, and all of those picks have mostly dried up with painfully little to show for it.
Trajan Langdon had to be thinking about this as he watched his new team destroy his old one and will hopefully avoid the same mistakes that took a promising team full of talent, youth and draft assets and turned it into the pathetic shell we saw last night.
Availability matters as much or more than talent
Tobias Harris has never been as good a player as Brandon Ingram or Zion Williamson, but I’d take Harris over either of them because he’s always on the floor and they aren’t, and this has been going on for years in New Orleans.
The Pels’ big 3 of Zion, BI and Lonzo barely even played together, as one or all three of them were always injured.
I’m not sure any team in the NBA has been as decimated by injuries over the years as the Pelicans, who have seen Zion miss a ton of time again, had Ingram out before they traded him, lost Dejounte Murray for the season and last night found out Trey Murphy III was also out for the rest of the year.
Their once-stacked roster was wrecked by injuries to their top guys, which forced them to make terrible moves that ultimately led to last night’s disastrous group.
Langdon definitely had this in mind when he made his offseason moves, as he specifically targeted guys without lengthy injury histories, something that has served the Pistons well this season, as they’ve mostly been healthy aside from the injury to Jaden Ivey.
Trajan Langdon probably has PTSD after trying to build teams around Zion, BI and Lonzo, so my guess is he will continue to avoid injury-prone players regardless of how talented they are.
You can’t trade the wrong guys
When Zion, BI and Lonzo could never stay healthy, what did the Pelicans do? Traded Jrue Holiday of course!
Holiday went on to win titles with both the Bucks and Celtics, so maybe keeping Lonzo instead was a bad idea. The Pels traded Holiday for a washed Eric Bledsoe, Steven Adams a couple of picks and swaps and the team never really recovered.
Holiday is not only very good, but he was the heart of that team, so the other guys on the roster went from his leadership to now being led by Zion. Oops.
They then flipped Josh Hart and NAW in a package for CJ McCollum, who is a very good player but you could definitely argue the Pelicans would be better off if they had not made that trade, as Hart and NAW are quality role players who impact the game in more ways than McCollum.
Most recently, the Pels traded Dyson Daniels and two more of their first-round picks for Dejounte Murray, who only played 31 games this season while Daniels had a breakout that will likely lead to a first-team All-Defensive team selection.
After making the big trades of AD and Holiday, the Pels squandered all of those draft picks and young players on two aging guards who were worse than the sum of the parts they traded to get them.
They never had patience, never let the group grow and instead tried to patch holes with quick fixes who could help Zion Williamson win right away, which has not happened.
There’s a lot to avoid in the Pelicans’ recent history, as they backed the wrong guys, traded the wrong players and dismantled what was once one of the most exciting and promising teams in the NBA.
Much like Zion’s entire career, these Pels’ teams of the last five years will be a giant “what if” in the league history books.
These are the exact types of moves that Trajan Langdon must avoid this summer and luckily he knows it better than anyone.