Despite “successful season,” Pelicans’ off-season is “a time to get better”

METAIRIE – The New Orleans Pelicans matched the second-best regular-season record in franchise history.

Their 49-33 mark represented a seven-game improvement over last season, which was six games better than the record two years ago.

Their seventh-place standing entering the Western Conference post-season was their highest in six seasons and their victory over Sacramento in a play-in elimination game sent them back to the playoffs after a one-season absence.

But they lasted just nine days in the playoffs, which diminished the excitement over what was accomplished during the preceding 179 days.

So on the final day of April on Tuesday the team was holding exit interviews inside its practice facility, less than 24 hours after being swept by top-seeded Oklahoma City in a first-round series.

“A lot of things we did this season led us to believe we’d be playing deep into the summer,” Executive Vice President of Basketball Operations David Griffin said.

"I think you'll see a real sense of urgency from all of us."

David Griffin recaps the Pelicans season pic.twitter.com/VxuoOiooi5

— New Orleans Pelicans (@PelicansNBA) April 30, 2024

But they let the No. 6 seed and an opportunity to avoid the play-in tournament slip away with a home loss to the Los Angeles Lakers on the final day of the regular season. Another home loss to the Lakers two days later in a play-in game forced them to play the elimination game.

Though they regrouped to eliminate the Kings, they lost to the Thunder by an average of 16 points per game.

“You can have a successful season and still fall short of your expectations,” head coach Willie Green said. “And that’s where we are.”

"You can still have a successful season and fall short of your expectations." pic.twitter.com/FiKeSu91WP

— New Orleans Pelicans (@PelicansNBA) April 30, 2024

New Orleans entered the season hoping to play a sufficient number of games involving all three of its top players – Zion Williamson, Brandon Ingram and CJ McCollum, who had played in just 10 games together since McCollum arrived in a trade with Portland midway through the 2021-22 season – to learn just how good its core was.

Primarily injuries to Williamson, along with others to Ingram and McCollum, had kept the trio apart.

This season, though, Williamson played the most regular-season games (70) of his five-year career, Ingram played the most in his five seasons with the Pelicans (64) and McCollum played in 66.

“We figured it out a little bit,” Williamson said.

"We figured it out a little bit … the more we're on the court together, the better we are."

Z on playing with B.I. & CJ pic.twitter.com/vyr4VdgZNf

— New Orleans Pelicans (@PelicansNBA) April 30, 2024

But despite the increased availability of the big three, injuries still placed a significant limitation on the team. Williamson was dominant as he led the Pelicans back from an 18-point deficit to a tie late in the fourth quarter of the play-in loss to the Lakers, but he suffered a strained hamstring that he called “super frustrating.”

He didn’t play again – and the Pelicans weren’t the same.

“That was a big one at the wrong time,” Griffin said.

Griffin said the trio was together enough to show that the group can be “really good” but also “enough to see we have a lot of work to do.”

Even without Williamson, Green said the organization “had a lot of faith and trust” in the players available against the Thunder “and we went after it.”

But New Orleans, which averaged 115 points per game during the regular season, didn’t score more than 92 points in any game during the series and averaged just 89.5. Ingram was the leading available scorer, but averaged 14.3 points and scored eight in the finale after averaging 21 during the regular season.

Though Ingram averaged nearly 37 minutes against OKC he had just returned from a 12-game absence due to a hyper-extended in time to play in the two games against the Lakers and wasn’t in peak form for “the crucible of playing basketball,” as Griffin put it.

"Every story doesn't have a good ending."

B.I. on the ups and downs of the season pic.twitter.com/eLHkuDpFbO

— New Orleans Pelicans (@PelicansNBA) April 30, 2024

The absence of Williamson and Ingram’s limitations prevented New Orleans from having, in Griffin’s words, “a crescendo moment” in the playoffs to demonstrate “what we could be.”

Griffin said he and the basketball brass would take its time before making any decisions about next season’s roster in order to avoid choices that could be tainted by the emotions of the disappointing ending. He noted that an evaluation based solely on the two losses to the Lakers would have been flawed just as one based on the four-game sweep of a West Coast road trip immediately before that would have been.

He added that the organization’s approach to recent off-seasons was to “err on the side of continuity” in hopes of finally getting a useful evaluation of the big three as a unit, calling them “three damn good basketball players.”

Williamson said the series against OKC “would have been different” if he had been able to play.

“It was really bittersweet,” he said of his first post-season experience, which ended less than 48 minutes of playing time after it began.

The challenge this off-season is for the organization not to assume that continued improved health is all that stands between the Pelicans and a deeper post-season run, nor to assume the short playoff stay automatically requires breaking up the big three.

“It takes multiple star-quality players to win,” Griffin said.

He noted that the Western Conference was “historically good.” New Orleans’ record this season would have placed it third in the West a year ago and tied for third in the East this year.

Griffin added that he expects teams that didn’t reach the post-season to spend the off-season trying to get “radically better.”

That will require the Pelicans to approach the off-season with “a sense of urgency.”

“This isn’t a time for complacency,” Griffin said. “It’s a time to get better.”