Injuries Give New Orleans Pelicans A Golden Chance To Pivot

It didn’t take long for the 2024-25 NBA season to go off the rails for the New Orleans Pelicans.

Dejounte Murray, their big-name offseason acquisition, fractured his hand in the Pelicans’ season-opening win over the Chicago Bulls. Star forward Zion Williamson missed that game with an illness, but he returned the next game to help the Pelicans beat the rebuilding Portland Trail Blazers and get off to a 2-0 start. Since then, the Pelicans have lost 18 of their past 20 games.

Injuries have ravaged their rotation. Williamson has missed the past 13 games with a hamstring strain and “will be out for an extended period of time longer,” according to ESPN’s Shams Charania. Veteran guard CJ McCollum missed 13 games with an adductor injury. Trey Murphy III missed the first 10 games of the season because of a hamstring strain. Herb Jones (shoulder strain) and Jose Alvarado (hamstring injury) remain out. Brandon Ingram has missed the past five games with a calf injury, too.

No team could survive that volume of injuries to its top rotation players. The Pelicans are no exception. They’ve plummeted to the bottom of the Western Conference, behind even the rebuilding Trail Blazers and Utah Jazz. They’re already eight games behind the No. 10 seed San Antonio Spurs for the final spot in the play-in tournament.

Much like the 2023-24 Memphis Grizzlies, is shaping up to be a lost year for Pelicans due to injuries. Luckily, they have full control over their 2025 first-round pick. Unlike the similarly downtrodden Philadelphia 76ers, tanking could be a realistic option for them later in the season, although that “isn’t a consideration” right now, according to ESPN’s Brian Windhorst.

Windhorst added that the Pelicans “want to see what their hopefully eventually healthy roster can do.” However, they’d be better off using this season as an opportunity to pivot ahead of a potentially franchise-defining offseason.

Ingram’s Future

The Pelicans entered this season feeling incomplete. They traded former lottery pick Dyson Daniels and two first-round picks to the Atlanta Hawks this offseason to acquire Murray, but that left them even more guard- and wing-heavy. They began the season starting Daniel Theis, whom they signed to a one-year, veteran-minimum contract, at center.

Ingram seemed like the obvious way to rectify that roster imbalance, particularly after the Pelicans signed Murphy to a four-year, $112 million extension on the eve of the regular season. With Jones signed through 2026-27 as well, Ingram’s long-term fit in New Orleans was murkier than ever.

Ingram is in the final season of his five-year, $158.3 million contract and is set to become an unrestricted free agent next summer. According to Windhorst, he and the Pelicans “are at a stalemate,” as they “can’t agree on a contract extension, and trade talks since last summer have failed to align.”

Windhorst added that the Pelicans are both aiming to get value for Ingram and shed salary to help them dip below the luxury-tax line (they’re currently $3.5 million above it),” which “is hard enough.” However, “finding a deal with a team Ingram will be comfortable signing a new contract with has also stalled talks.”

Ingram could walk as a free agent and leave the Pelicans empty-handed this offseason. However, the current free-agent landscape isn’t hospitable to players looking for a big payday. The Brooklyn Nets and Washington Wizards are the only two teams that project to have at least $25 million in cap space, according to Spotrac’s Keith Smith, although that could change between now and the NBA’s Feb. 6 trade deadline.

Perhaps the Pelicans believe they’ll be able to strongarm Ingram into a favorable new contract because he’ll have so few realistic options in free agency. However, his recent decision to hire Klutch Sports doesn’t bode well if that’s the approach they’re hoping to take. They learned firsthand about Klutch’s typical tactics with Anthony Davis back in the late 2010s.

Even if the Pelicans were hoping to use the leverage game against Ingram, they’d likely struggle to find enough playing time for him, Jones, Murphy and Williamson when all four were healthy. Unless they planned to pivot off one of the other three—we’ll get to that shortly—they’d have to consider that as they weigh whether to extend Ingram.

McCollum Takers?

If the Pelicans decide to keep Ingram long-term, that could spell the end of McCollum’s time in New Orleans. The 33-year-old is the only player on the wrong side of 30 whom the Pelicans have signed beyond this season.

McCollum is earning $33.3 million this year and $30.7 million next year, and then he’ll become an unrestricted free agent in 2026. His veteran leadership has been critical for the Pelicans’ young locker room, but he doesn’t project to be a long-term piece of the puzzle in the Big Easy, particularly after the acquisition of Murray.

McCollum has started all nine games in which he’s appeared this season, but that may be a byproduct of the Pelicans’ injury woes. If they ever get fully healthy, they’ll have to move two of Murray, McCollum, Ingram, Jones, Murphy and Williamson to the bench unless they want to start Williamson as a small-ball center. McCollum seems like the obvious odd man out, as he could thrive as a microwave-scorer sixth man.

Given his age and contract, the Pelicans likely wouldn’t get a huge haul for McCollum if they do shop him before the trade deadline. But since he doesn’t figure to be a long-term fixture for them, flipping him could help them replenish their war chest and perhaps move closer to dipping under the tax line.

The Nuclear Option

The Pelicans drafted Williamson with the No. 1 overall pick in 2019. Over the past five-plus seasons, he has played in 190 out of a possible 412 games.

Williamson did play in a career-high 70 games last season, which he punctuated with a 40-point, 11-rebound tour de force against the Los Angeles Lakers in the play-in tournament. However, he suffered a hamstring strain late in that game that sidelined him for the Pelicans’ entire first-round series against the Oklahoma City Thunder. (The Thunder wound up sweeping them in four games.)

Therein lies the rub with Williamson. His upside is tantalizing, but given his unique body habitus and lengthy injury history, it’s fair for the Pelicans to wonder whether he’ll ever stay healthy for an extended period. How much more time are they willing to waste on the off-chance that he dodges the injury bug from here on out?

As Morten Jensen wrote at Yahoo Sports earlier this year, Williamson’s unique archetype creates team-building challenges for the Pelicans, too. He’s short for a power forward and isn’t a high-volume three-point shooter, so the Pels need to pair him with a rim-protecting, glass-cleaning, long-range marksman at center. Rookie center Yves Missi is showing major promise on the first two fronts, but he has yet to attempt a three-pointer this season.

If the Pelicans do ever decide to move on from Williamson, they have an easy out. As Mike Vorkunov of The Athletic noted last December, the final three years of his contract are now fully non-guaranteed because he played in only 29 games during the 2022-23 campaign. They could cut him after this season and be left with no dead money on their books.

The odds of that happening are roughly zero. If the Pelicans did want to part ways with Williamson, they’d assuredly explore their trade options first. However, there’s almost no chance they’ll get value commensurate with his upside given his injury history. They’d have to be willing to eat a potentially huge loss if he did stay healthy on his new team.

The Pelicans don’t have to decide on Williamson’s future this season. They could always revisit their options with him next offseason when most teams have more trade flexibility. Figuring out the long-term futures of Ingram and McCollum is a far more pressing priority.

If the Pelicans write this off as a lost season, they shouldn’t feel pressured to receive win-now pieces in return for either Ingram or McCollum. They need to take advantage of that luxury while they still can.

Unless otherwise noted, all stats via NBA.com, PBPStats, Cleaning the Glass or Basketball Reference. All salary information via Spotrac and salary-cap information via RealGM. All odds via FanDuel Sportsbook.