NBA Hater Report: Pelicans look hopeless … should they explore a Zion trade?

Welcome back to the NBA Hater Report: A breakdown of some of the players, teams and trends around the league that are drawing the ire of yours truly. If you’re not a fellow pessimist, proceed with caution. 

Winless Pelicans need to trade Zion

As of Monday morning, New Orleans Pelicans are one of two winless NBA teams at 0-6. The other is the Brooklyn Nets, but the Nets want to be bad. The Pelicans, which is to say Joe Dumars, conducted their offseason operation in the bizarrely bold fashion of a team that expected to be good. 

First they traded Indiana’s 2026 first-round pick, which is probably going to be a pretty high selection as the Pacers are currently 1-5, for the No. 23 overall pick in this year’s draft, which they subsequently sent to the Hawks along with their own 2026 unprotected first-round pick to move up to No. 13, where they took Derik Queen, who played seven minutes on Sunday. 

Just for fun, they traded C.J. McCollum’s expiring deal for two more years of Jordan Poole — even though they drafted point guard Jeremiah Fears with the No. 8 overall pick and owe Dejounte Murray north of $90 million over the next three years. 

Make it make sense. 

There are only two rationales for trading your own unprotected pick in the following year’s draft. One, you think you’re going to be good this season, and as such, your pick next year won’t be a high one. Which is to say, the Pelicans really believed they were going to be good. In this Western Conference. 

Or two, you think the player you are taking at the end of the lottery is so good that it’s worth giving up what could literally be the No. 1 overall pick in what is a stacked 2026 draft class. In which case, you are playing Queen seven minutes? The Pelicans were down by 20 points basically from the second quarter on Sunday, and yet Queen didn’t even get into the game until the 6:51 mark of the fourth. 

Again, make it make sense. 

If this guy is your next star, you can’t even get him developmental minutes in a blowout? Meanwhile, your current star, Zion Williamson, who was all the rage coming into the season for the good shape he’d gotten himself into, is shooting 48% from the field — a strikingly low mark for a guy who literally has not attempted one shot outside of 14 feet in non-garbage time all season, per Cleaning the Glass. 

This thing is a mess. Every day that coach Willie Green isn’t fired is a surprise. Problem is, the guy who would be doing the firing (Dumars) is probably — or at least should be — sitting on a scalding hot seat himself. 

The good news is that Williamson’s career-low efficiency notwithstanding, the guy is on the court and in good shape and remains a clear force, meaning he might actually have something that at least approaches positive trade value. The Pelicans should be jumping on this opportunity to deal Williamson. 

Yes, it’s scary to trade a guy who may become the consistent superstar somewhere else that he was supposed to be for you, but this thing in New Orleans is cooked. The vibe-check is showing no pulse. Sunday’s loss was pathetic. This is a totally busted team. So get whatever you can for Zion, and Trey Murphy and Herb Jones while you’re at it, and start moving forward with Queen and Fears. 

They should’ve done that a long time ago. They should still have Indiana’s 2026 pick plus their own to tank for. But they don’t, and by clinging to this idea that the Zion project is actually going to suddenly pop only serves to set them back further. It’s time to trade Zion and start cutting losses in New Orleans, assuming they can find a taker for at least a couple cents on the dollar. 

Morant is shooting 15% from 3 (5 for 31) and just 40% overall to start the season. He’s never been a good shooter, but for a minute it looked like he was trending toward at least average — at least if you allowed him to walk into practice shots. That hasn’t been the case for a while, nor has the idea that his consistent ability to get to the rim and finish with world-class force and athleticism adequately covers for what has become, without question, the single-worst defect a point guard can have in today’s game. 

For those of you unfamiliar with what these numbers mean, “at-rim frequency” represents the percentage of Morant’s total shots that care coming, or in years past have come, from inside the restricted area (four feet). You can see that when Morant was in his “this guy is a future MVP” prime, basically half his attempts came at the rim, but that number has steadily declined to an even lower mark than the one charted in the above graph (it’s actually at 25% now, per Cleaning the Glass). 

Meanwhile, 37% of Morant’s shots this season have come from either the long mid-range (between 15 feet and the 3-point line) or beyond the arc, per CTG, by far a cumulative career high. Which is to say, a terrible outside shooter is taking more outside shots than ever, a development in keeping with a half-decade trend that has unsurprisingly correlated with an across-the-board decline in everything from paint points to PER and on down the metrical line. 

Throw in all the on- and off-court drama (Morant was suspended by the Grizzlies for a game over the weekend), lack of meaningful defense, disinterest in running offensive schemes that don’t suit his preferences even if they make the team better, and effort like this:

It’s fair to wonder whether Morant has become more trouble that he’s worth in Memphis. 

Warriors have no D without Draymond

After a 4-1 start, the Warriors had a golden opportunity to really pile up some early season wins, which are going to matter a lot in the Western Conference playoff race come March and April, with a pair of games vs. undermanned teams in Milwaukee and Indiana. 

Instead, they lost to the Bucks without Giannis Antetokounmpo and the then-winless Pacers without Obi Toppin, Andrew Nembhard, Bennedict Mathurin or T.J. McConnell to all but erase all the momentum they had built to begin the year. 

You can’t make much of numbers at this point in the season, but for what it’s worth the Warriors’ offense is sitting below league average and a troubling trend is developing on defense — which is to say it falls apart when Draymond Green is off the floor. 

League wide, those numbers would currently make the Warriors the No. 4 defense with Green and No. 29 without him, and that 23.5-point/per 100 swing that happens when he goes off the court is positively Jokic-esque. 

Green is to Golden State’s defense what Steph Curry is the offense; that’s not going to change. But they can’t fall off this kind of cliff without him because he’s 35 years old and cannot play huge minutes (he’s at under 30 per game so far) in the regular season, especially not as undersized as he is positionally and the toll that takes on his body fighting every possession two weight classes up, if the Warriors want him to be healthy and energized for the postseason.