PORTLAND — This isn’t how it was supposed to look.
After all the offseason moves and all the talk about shifting their style of play, the New Orleans Pelicans wanted change.
Was this change going to provide a better product than last year’s 49-win team? Maybe. But at the very least, it was going to be something different.
Three games into the 2024-25 season, the Pelicans have a 2-1 record, but they’ve rarely felt like a team that’s progressed from what they were last season. If anything, the same characteristics that frustrated fans last year when this team was at its worst are popping up once again.
They’ve been stagnant on offense. Their energy on both ends has been lacking. Their stars have been inconsistent.
While the Pelicans overcame some of their struggles and won the first two games of the season, the wheels finally came off on Sunday when the Portland Trail Blazers throttled them in a 125-103 victory. This was only two nights after the Pels came back from a double-digit deficit to barely squeak out a win over this same Blazers squad in the final seconds.
This kind of lifeless performance in back-to-back games against the rebuilding Blazers has to turn into a wake-up call for a franchise that knows all too well the importance of banking winnable games and avoiding losses that could come back to hurt it in a hypercompetitive Western Conference.
Despite bringing back so many familiar faces, this group still hasn’t established an identity three games into the regular season.
“We didn’t deserve to win tonight,” Pelicans guard CJ McCollum said after Sunday’s loss.
“The guys know what we need to do,” Pelicans coach Willie Green added. “It’s just a matter of us putting it all together.”
Certain aspects of this season’s uneven start are out of the Pelicans’ control. One of the primary goals during training camp was to establish Dejounte Murray as the new floor general in New Orleans. Murray’s calming presence lasted only one game before he suffered a fractured left hand in the regular-season opener that’ll sideline him for at least four to six weeks.
Without Murray, the offense has looked hapless and unorganized. In their two games against Portland over the weekend, the Pelicans’ points per possession during halfcourt sets were 75.6 and 82.1, respectively. That’s about as ugly as it gets.
The absence of Trey Murphy III, who has been out since the start of October with a hamstring injury, only adds to the issues with spacing and creating easy opportunities in transition.
Both Murray and Murphy were supposed to play crucial roles in the evolution the Pelicans were trying to undergo. But their absence has forced Zion Williamson, Brandon Ingram and CJ McCollum to carry the shot-creation burden more than New Orleans intended. The struggles to adapt to that shift in dynamic have been tougher to overcome than anticipated. It’s resulted in the offense looking more stale than ever while the team searches for different paths to success.
“It’s a part of it. It’s a part of figuring out your team,” Green said. “It’s tough when you lose one of your top guys who had been playing all throughout camp and preseason. But it’s the NBA. As a group, we’ve got to keep working at it and figure it out.”
While some issues with continuity have contributed to the early-season lulls, the Pelicans have basically used their same starting five from last season in the last two games, with Daniel Theis taking the center position instead of Jonas Valančiūnas. Jose Alvarado is back. Jordan Hawkins is back.
Even if the execution gets a little sloppy with new lineups working together, this team should have more than enough talent to avoid looking as ineffective as it has the majority of the last two games. A big part of that is just playing with more energy, effort and physicality — the things that have nothing to do with continuity or changes in playing style.
The Blazers grabbed 22 offensive rebounds on Sunday. Blazers forward Jerami Grant drilled a career-high eight 3-pointers on Friday and followed it up with another 28 points on Sunday. For long stretches during the first three games, the Pelicans have been the team playing with less physicality and less urgency.
Perhaps starting the season with games against Chicago and Portland — two teams expected to be at the bottom of their respective conferences — has fooled the Pelicans into thinking things would be easy at the start of the schedule. In reality, the first three games have shown that this team still has a lot of work to do to re-establish some of the intangible things that formed its identity.
“They were the more physical team right away from the start,” Green said. “We have to negate that by playing with more force, executing at a high level, setting screens for each other (and) sharing the ball. All things we’ve talked about. We just didn’t go out and execute today.”
It would also help if New Orleans could back up some of the talk Green has emphasized since the start of training camp about this team desperately needing to increase its 3-point volume to improve spacing and diversify the offense.
Through three games, the Pelicans are 23rd in 3-point attempts, 17th in 3-point percentage and 22nd in offensive rating.
Those numbers need to improve drastically, even without Murray and Murphy to help with getting shots up and creating for others.
“We’ve got to get better at it. I’ve got to generate more. We’ve got to get downhill,” McCollum said. “It’s not just about taking them. We’ve got to make them too. … We’ve got to get good looks and we’ve got to knock them down.”
The Pelicans do have one person who can almost singlehandedly erase all these mistakes by playing like the best version of himself, but he’s failed to reach that level during his two games in Portland.
Williamson’s performance was somewhat sluggish because of the illness that sidelined him for the first game of the season. However, a player of his caliber shooting a combined 7-of-27 from the field against the Blazers is unacceptable. This is the same guy who shot 59 percent from the field during the first five seasons of his career.
Williamson will eventually recover from his virus and return to his old form, but the leaders of the team have to establish a team-wide identity they can lean on until Murray and Murphy are back. Some of it will come from what’s worked for them in the past. Either way, there has to be an understanding of what’s required to play at a high level.
More importantly, those same leaders have to make it clear that the lack of energy and urgency that was seen in the two games against Portland won’t be tolerated. And that starts with guys like Williamson and Ingram setting the standard with their effort and attention to detail on a nightly basis. If that standard isn’t established, the inconsistencies will continue.
(Photo of Zion Williamson: Amanda Loman / Getty Images)
