If you’re the type of person who believes a sports franchise can be cursed, then it’s safe to assume you think the New Orleans Pelicans do, in fact, need an exorcism. Coming into this season, the Pelicans boasted a captivating blend of individual scorers with All-Star upside and the cogent supplementary pieces who could accentuate their strengths. They had size-related issues, sure, but if everyone stayed healthy and shared the ball, back-to-back trips to the playoffs—and more—felt credible. Alas, because we’re talking about New Orleans, success was not meant to be.
Now 5-18 and either dead last or damn near close to it in almost every fundamental statistical category that matters—from half-court offense to transition defense to net 3-point differential to true shooting percentage to spread differential—New Orleans is, with sincere apologies to the Philadelphia 76ers, the bleakest situation in the league.
Why? Injuries, mostly. Zion Williamson, Dejounte Murray, Herb Jones, CJ McCollum, Brandon Ingram, Trey Murphy III, Jose Alvarado, and basically everyone on the opening night roster has already missed significant time. The two Pelicans who’ve spent the most time on the court together this season are [decidedly depressing drumroll please…] Javonte Green and Yves Missi. Their net rating is -18 in 322 minutes. Woof.
Here’s a chronological timeline of everything that’s gone oh-so-terribly wrong for New Orleans over the past few months:
August 30: Amid a contract dispute after asking for the max, Ingram posts this cryptic message on Instagram a few days before he doesn’t show up to a voluntary workout that’s attended by pretty much every other teammate.
October 3: Murphy suffers a preseason hamstring injury that sidelines him for more than a month.
October 23: Murray fractures his left hand in the season opener.
October 29: Jones tears his rotator cuff—an injury he finally returned from Thursday night—and McCollum strains his right abductor, which kept him out for the next 13 games.
November 9: Williamson is ruled out indefinitely with a hamstring injury. Every update about his condition since then has been discouraging.
November 12: Alvarado strains his hamstring and has yet to return.
November 15-16: New Orleans’s entire medical staff sobs involuntarily for 48 consecutive hours.
November 19: With zero point guards in the rotation, the Pelicans lose to the Dallas Mavericks by 41 points. It was their second of nine straight losses. (Despite it being an NBA Cup game, where point differential matters, Dallas benched its starters before the final buzzer; afterward, Jason Kidd admitted he wasn’t trying to embarrass New Orleans.)
November 20: The Pelicans sign point guard Elfrid Payton, whose most recent appearance in an NBA game was on May 15, 2022, with the Phoenix Suns, in garbage time of their 33-point Game 7 loss against the Mavs.
December 1: New Orleans scores 28 points in the first half during a blowout in Madison Square Garden, featuring some of the most catatonic switches in recent league history.
This doesn’t fully cover all that has troubled New Orleans this season—Jordan Hawkins can’t stay healthy, Ingram just parted with his agency, the recently traded Dyson Daniels won Defensive Player of the Month in November—but it’s enough to characterize what’s transpired as a living nightmare, exacerbated by the fact that (as a notoriously frugal organization) all of it’s happening with a payroll $2 million above the luxury tax threshold. Insult, meet injury.
It’s tempting to chalk this whole mess up to bad luck and sweep everything under a proverbial rug behind the pretense that nothing actually matters if Zion can’t run or jump. If/when he’s on the court, things will stabilize. That’s certainly one frustrating and increasingly delusional way to diagnose New Orleans’s problem. It’s also not entirely irrational. Coming off a season in which they made the playoffs but were swept in Round 1 by the Oklahoma City Thunder (largely because Williamson was injured), Pels executive vice president of basketball operations David Griffin telegraphed change during his end-of-season media availability. A couple months later he let Jonas Valanciunas walk via a sign-and-trade and then made a small blockbuster trade that doubled down on the franchise player’s captivating talent and tendency to ghost his team on an annual basis.
It was somewhat understandable to believe a competent ball handler like Murray could organize and jolt the remnants of this promising core. But acquiring him at the cost the Pelicans paid was risky, too. Even those who were bullish about New Orleans’s depth, flexibility, and top-end talent had to acknowledge some questions about its underlying construction before the games even began. The Pelicans were built small, with the perennially unavailable Williamson expected to play a ton of minutes at center. McCollum’s weighty contract made shifting him to the bench a tricky proposition, too, as Ingram’s unknown future cast a pall over it all.
All the on-court concerns are moot now. We still haven’t seen Murray and Zion together. The depleted Pelicans are toast. Their season is lost and, with Christmas still weeks away, it’s already time for them to dramatically make a more honest appraisal of their trajectory. (Williamson was drafted six years ago, has played for three coaches, and has never competed in a playoff game.) Before we go there, it’s useful to look back at how the Pelicans got where they are. If for no better reason than doing so can help clarify what options lie before them.
It started with Anthony Davis—the generational talent who forced a trade to the Los Angeles Lakers five days after Zion signed his rookie contract. A quick refresher about that agreement: For AD, the Pelicans received Ingram, Josh Hart, Lonzo Ball, and multiple draft picks that eventually turned into Nickeil Alexander-Walker, Jaxson Hayes, Jones, and Dyson Daniels.
From there: Hart and Alexander-Walker were included in the trade for McCollum. (Right now each, on their own, might be a more valuable and better player.) Ball was sent to the Chicago Bulls in a sign-and-trade that returned nothing meaningful. Daniels and a Lakers first-round pick in 2025 were exchanged for Murray. Hayes is barely an NBA player on the fringes of a septic Lakers rotation. Jones is one of the NBA’s 10 best defenders and universally beloved on a team-friendly deal, while Ingram is an unrestricted free agent this summer and has one foot out the door. In other words: The bright future that AD trade seemingly promised has not come to fruition.
New Orleans now faces a conundrum that’s recurrent around the league: The players it probably wouldn’t mind moving on from—Ingram, McCollum, and Williamson—are on contracts with little-to-negative trade value. Still, unless Griffin wants to risk repeating this hellscape in 2026, there’s a good chance that some, maybe all, of those names will be wearing different jerseys next season. (The full guarantee date on Zion’s contract is January 7. Cutting bait now would obviously be rash, but simply having that option is so telling. Has there ever been a more ephemeral, tantalizing conundrum of a star?)
Whether or not you believe the Pelicans are afflicted by some kind of noxious spirit that hates healthy basketball players, the organization does in fact have some good news heading its way. For starters, New Orleans has all of its own first-round picks and, if it wants, can swap with Milwaukee in 2026. Those resources make the thought of another rebuild slightly more digestible, buttressed by the potential of having the highest possible odds (14 percent) of winning next year’s lottery and getting to reset around Cooper Flagg. Finish with one of the three worst records and the Pelicans' odds of receiving a top-four pick would be 52.1 percent, with Dylan Harper, Ace Bailey, and a deep class of prospects to choose from.
There’s also a world in which the Pelicans can be competitive next season and avoid another tank job. Jones, Murphy, Alvarado, and Missi (an exciting rookie big man who doubles as the lone bright spot flickering in New Orleans’s blanket of darkness) are all keepers with complementary skill sets who can thrive alongside any type of superstar centerpiece. Murray is worth keeping around until/unless another team makes an offer the Pelicans can’t refuse.
From there, what if—please hear me out—Zion isn’t traded and somehow manages to stay as healthy as he was throughout the 2023-24 season. Next year, the Pelicans could unleash a rotation that includes Williamson, Jones, Murphy, Missi, McCollum, Alvarado, Murray, and a top-five pick in the 2025 draft. Ingram appears to be as good as gone—be it via trade before this season’s deadline or as a free agent next summer—but if there aren’t any takers willing to pay him the money he wants, New Orleans may be the only realistic option. Throw him in the mix and that team could be dangerous. It’d also require some patience.
I’m not a doctor, but I am old enough to remember the conversation surrounding Joel Embiid when he was about the same age Zion currently is. There was doubt about his body, pessimism about whether he’d ever reach his potential, and a non-guaranteed maximum contract extension that let Philadelphia off the hook in case another debilitating surgery befell its primary franchise tentpole. Williamson may never reach the heights Embiid has, but in this telling of a best-case scenario he can be a singular perennial All-Star who impacts winning at a high level.
As they endure a special type of misery that’s akin to what the Memphis Grizzlies suffered through last season, why can’t the 2025-26 Pelicans be what today’s Grizzlies are? It’s not impossible!
At the same time, it’s just so hard to disentangle the promise insinuated by Williamson's undeniable skill from the baggage he carries that gets heavier every day. If the Pelicans are too exhausted to see their investments through, they can process this season as the disappointing end to an era that was ultimately, sadly, a box of jewelry covered in barbed wire instead of wrapping paper. It’s normal to witness a failure so vast and deep, and then struggle to wrap your arms or mind around it. The simplest reaction may just be to wipe your hands, shrug your shoulders, and call this what it is: a curse.
