The NBA saved New Orleans basketball once. It's time to do it again

The Pelicans ownership group is incapable of building a sustainably competent team. The NBA should force them to sell the team to someone invested in investing. Good morning. Let's basketball.

The New Orleans Pelicans are now 0-4 after a lackluster challenge to the Denver Nuggets on Wednesday night. The Pels are the only winless team in the West after finishing 14th in the conference last season.

Unfortunately, the Pelicans do not control their own pick in the 2026 NBA Draft. They traded the better of their own pick and Milwaukee's pick to Atlanta to move up 10 spots and pick up Derik Queen in the late lottery in the 2025 draft. To initially get that pick from which they moved up, the Pels traded Indiana back its 2026 pick. The Pacers are also 0-4 and likely headed deep into the lottery.

In other words, the Pelicans might have conceded two high 2026 lottery picks for Derik Queen.

This was quickly and widely recognized as basketball malpractice. The deals were carried out by Joe Dumars, who began his front office career assembling an excellent roster in Detroit before watching his career teeter. The unwinding of the Pistons' title contention era was an unmitigated disaster with bad trades and a string of unsuccessful coaching hires. The failures toward the end of Dumars' tenure helped set up a fairly long drought in Detroit. Then Dumars joined the disastrous Kings front office for a bit, where some more bad decisions were made. (Everyone blames Vivek Ranadive, Dumars' boss. But it's unclear who had the bright idea to, say, replace Dave Joerger with Luke Walton.)

The Pelicans hired Dumars this summer after evicting David Griffin, whose record was mixed in several stops but who is generally seen as an effective general manager. As was the case in Sacramento, Dumars just sort of ... arrived without a formal process. Dumars is well-liked and very well-connected, and spent the last few years at the league office, and there's an element of NBAism to his arrival in a basketball market under duress. There's a slight feeling of the Pelicans being Colangeloized here; frankly, it could have been the case in Sacramento with Dumars as well. The NBA certainly installed its own management in Sacramento before, back when the Maloofs were working hard to Major League the Kings. The NBA certainly forced the Sixers to hire Jerry Colangelo to manage Sam Hinkie out of the franchise before handing it over to the younger Colangelo, Bryan, to relatively ill effect. The NBA is not above getting involved, and while there's no evidence that's what happened with Dumars, it's certainly within the bounds of possibility.

The problem, of course, is that Dumars is an old-school general manager who has never effectively managed the newer hard cap, and is almost certainly not the best option given where the Pelicans are in their roster cycle right now. Griffin made at least horrific move before being deposed (the Dejounte Murray-Dyson Daniels deal); the Queen maneuvers are so much worse with the payout still to come in May and June. (Queen becoming an MVP candidate in the next couple years will result in a widespread crow buffet, of course.)

The real problem here, as identified and shouted by those closest to the team, is that the Pelicans ownership group has no idea what it's doing running a pro basketball franchise and doesn't appear to care all that much about doing it better. The folks in charge of the club are NFL owners who took on the Pelicans as an obligation and have treated it as such. It's an abysmal way to treat a customer base and a staff, all of whom actually care.

There is a solution here, if Adam Silver is bold enough to pursue it. The NBA forced the last New Orleans basketball franchise team owner, George Shinn, to sell as he struggled to make payroll due to rampant mismanagement. Late NBA commissioner David Stern forced Shinn to sell the club to the league itself. Stern essentially installed himself as the governor of the team (famously vetoing the Chris Paul trade to the Lakers despite previously claiming he'd remain uninvolved and defer to the incumbent management team) while the league pursued a local buyer. Eventually, the ownership of the NFL Saints agreed to buy the team and keep them in New Orleans. And then they, the new owners, left them, the Pelicans, to rot despite picking up two No. 1 picks (including Anthony freaking Davis), several All-Star Weekends and a more conducive revenue sharing environment.

Gayle Benson and her clique are bad NBA owners. They don't invest in the club (Murray's comments while he's still on the team are pretty shocking), they don't reward fans for loyalty, they don't manage basketball ops in a modern way, they don't spend, they don't appear to try. For the Pelicans to have as little playoff success as they've had despite the two No. 1 picks in good drafts is a real indictment. The ownership should be embarrassed by what they've failed to do. Yes, they are making payroll. That's not enough! And the other NBA governors – nearly all of whom invest and try to build something to varying levels of success – should be offended. Benson et al are holding the NBA back in New Orleans. They are shrinking the overall pie.

Perhaps some governors selfishly delight in one of the other 29 franchises not being a threat ever. Perhaps some governors are afraid that the league looking askance at bad owners will eventually bite them. (This was a critique of Stern's New Orleans takeover, that it was too imperial for some teams' taste.) But if all of these owners truly care about the growth and future of the league, then letting even one ownership group neglect their franchise and potentially ruin a market should be an outrage. It's an outrage to local fans and team staff, and that outrage needs to be respected more broadly by the national basketball media and eventually be the league itself. This is more and worse than failure. It is self-sabotage and there really should be no place for it in the league.

Scores

Rockets 139, Raptors 121 – Houston's offense has been quite good early, which is a great sign for the team spinning forward. I'm mystified by how bad Toronto's defense has looked. Wasn't that supposed to be a calling card? The Rockets had an eFG of 65%.

Cavaliers 105, Celtics 125 – What a win for Boston! Lots of offensive rebounds, cold shooting from Cleveland, limited turnovers: real nice. Kudos. Unfortunately, all I'm going to remember about the Celtics from October 29 is the incessant coverage Inside the NBA gave to Jaylen Brown's hair system.

The graphic for the doubleheader ... sheesh!

Magic 116, Pistons 135 – Orlando's disastrous start continues apace. The defense is just not anywhere close to where it's been. The biggest culprits: they aren't creating turnovers (desperately needed for easy buckets given their shooting woes) or controlling the glass. Detroit, which has been quite turnover-prone, only coughed it up 13 times in this game. Cade Cunningham, who has been really turnover-prone this season, had zero giveaways in maybe his best game yet in '25-26.

He had business for Jalen Suggs, Desmond Bane, Paolo Banchero and Franz Wagner. All of 'em.

Hawks 117, Nets 112 – Michael Porter Jr. is low-key off to a hot start. Imagine what the Nets will look like when he comes back to Earth!

Kings 113, Bulls 126 – Matas Buzelis has some star power. His three feeling started falling in this game, but he has some shake in his isolation repertoire and is a good cutter and greater finisher. Also, the Kings defense is horrific. But Buzelis does this against decent defenders, too.

I can't believe the Kings management watched the team operate under Doug Christie for half the season last year and thought it was a good idea to continue.

Pacers 105, Mavericks 107 – Anthony Davis left in the first quarter, joining Dereck Lively II on ice. We'll see how much time, if any, he misses. It's waaaaaay too early to be on tank watch for the Mavericks, but we are flagging the issue. The Pacers have an injury list almost as long as their active roster and are now 0-4. Mac McClung won about 13 minutes of playing time off the bench.

Pelicans 88, Nuggets 122 – Jamal Murray looks fresh and charged.

Nikola Jokic has four straight triple-doubles to start the season.

Denver is No. 3 in offense right now but appears to be on track to finish No. 1. Cam Johnson hasn't offered much yet, but at some point we'll need to discuss whether the mere lack of Michael Porter Jr. in that slot without depleting the bench by replacing him (as would have happened during his past injury absences) is helpful. Or maybe we first need to discuss Michael Malone vs. David Adelman. Because this looks pretty amazing.

Blazers 136, Jazz 134 – The Portland Trail Blazers are 3-2 behind Jrue Holiday and Deni Avdija. Huh. If I may for a moment, though: look at Keyonte George taking advantage of the refs' early whistle addiction and getting to the line for 15 free throws. In my glimpses, he's looked a whole lot better this season.

Lakers 116, Timberwolves 115 – A few missing stars in this playoff rematch, but Austin Reaves was there and he put this baby to bed.

Rudy Gobert gets a ton of undeserved criticism for situations like this, but wow Reaves put him on skates. Rudy bet on a pull-up or a hard left swerve and lost. Reaves is playing like an All-NBA candidate early on. The Lakers are 3-2 with zero appearances from LeBron James Sr. (Bronny James had a 5-minute Snell in this game with a single turnover) and just two games from Luka. Impressive.

Grizzlies 114, Suns 113 – You know who else is 3-2? The Memphis Grizzlies, thanks to another game-winning floater, this one before the buzzer. Just a very smooth transition play for a go-ahead bucket in the lane for Ja Morant. Devin Booker got a clean look on the other end, but a clean look doesn't get you everything.

Links

We have some drama in Dallas around the NHL Stars' future and present playing in the American Airlines Center co-managed by the hockey squad and the Mavericks. The Mavs are planning to build a new arena of their own, which is apparently causing the Stars some strife. Messy.

Kylie Cheung writes a love letter to James Harden.

This Patrick Redford piece in Defector on how ill-equipped NBA media is to cover the newest gambling scandal is quite good. I have a good dose of sympathy for my friends in sports media who haven't made gambling a core focus of their work and are trying to work through all of this in real-time while being sponsored by the sports betting behemoths. I have less sympathy for those media members who een sports gambling's biggest boosters and who are now in denial about how serious the problem can become.

Schedule

Light schedule with a couple of banger games. All times Eastern.

Magic at Hornets, 7
Warriors at Bucks, 8, NBA TV
Wizards at Thunder, 8
Heat at Spurs, 8:30

Be excellent to each other.