Late on Tuesday afternoon, just hours before the New Orleans Pelicans recorded their first win of the season, 116-112 over the Charlotte Hornets thanks to a fourth-quarter comeback, the team announced that star forward Zion Williamson would be out for at least a week with a hamstring strain.
Losing a player of Williamson’s caliber is never a good thing, particularly after an 0-6 start, but the silver lining was that it forced coach Willie Green to play rookie big man Derik Queen, who had strangely fallen out of the rotation. Entering Tuesday, Queen had seen his playing time decrease in each of the Pelicans’ four previous games, and he only saw the floor for six minutes and 51 seconds of garbage time action against the Oklahoma City Thunder on Sunday
Queen, the No. 13 pick in the 2025 NBA Draft, still only played 18 minutes against the Hornets, but he made his case to remain in the rotation long-term. He finished with 12 points, eight rebounds, seven assists and four steals on 5 of 7 from the field, and was instrumental in the comeback. His steal immediately after Jose Alvarado had hit a go-ahead 3-pointer with 16 seconds remaining was one of the biggest plays of the night.
“[I saw] trust in his work,” Alvarado said. “I told him you’re a rook, they’re gonna be on your ass — excuse my language. But just stay [true] to yourself, trust your work and that’s what he did. He stuck with it. He turned the ball over three times and guess what, I told him he’s gonna make a winning play. He got the winning steal”
Queen, who played the entire fourth quarter, had some rookie moments, including a hilarious long-range lob attempt from about 60 feet that resulted in a turnover, but he more than made up for them on both ends of the floor. He knocked down a few mid-range jumpers, showed off a deft touch around the rim and delivered some excellent passes.
The Hornets are not elite competition, and we don’t know what the coaches were seeing behind closed doors. Even so, it didn’t make sense that a big man with these kind of skills was barely getting on the floor for a winless team. It’s not as if the Pelicans have some sort of dynamite frontcourt. DeAndre Jordan was on his couch when the season began and he started a game for them last week.
Queen being glued to the bench was even more bizarre given the steep price the Pelicans paid to draft him in June.
Vice president of basketball operations Joe Dumars gave the Indiana Pacers their 2026 first-round pick back in exchange for the No. 23 pick in the 2025 draft, then sent No. 23 (Asa Newell) and an unprotected 2026 first-round pick to the Atlanta Hawks for the No. 13 pick, which they used to select Queen. The series of transactions was widely panned, and there were even rumors at the time that the Hawks’ front office was so bewildered by their good fortune that they called Dumars multiple times to make sure the 2026 pick really was unprotected.
The Pelicans and Pacers have the second- and fourth-worst records in the league, respectively. Come next June, there’s a good chance that Dumars will have traded away two top-10 picks in the 2026 draft — already being heralded for the wealth of talent at the top of the class — for Queen.
The nature of Queen’s arrival in New Orleans has placed an unfair amount of pressure on the 20-year-old, but he must be given a chance to prove himself, even once Williamson comes back. At this point, what do the Pelicans have to lose?
