NBA Season Preview: The New Orleans Pelicans all need redemption

One year after entering the season as trendy Western Conference upstarts, Anthony Davis and the New Orleans Pelicans come into 2016-17 searching for redemption.

Heading into the 2015-16 campaign, the Pelicans were fresh off a surprising playoff berth where Davis erupted with 31.5 points, 11.0 rebounds and 3.0 blocks per game against the soon-to-be-champion Golden State Warriors. The Kentucky product had just posted the 11th-best season in NBA history in terms of player efficiency rating — Stephen Curry would later supplant him, bumping him to 12th — which made him one of the front-runners to win the Most Valuable Player award in 2015-16. The Westgate Las Vegas SuperBook gave the Pelicans 30-1 odds to win the NBA title and put their over/under at 47.5, the sixth-highest total in the West.

Instead, injuries besieged Davis and the Pelicans, sending them plummeting to a dispiriting 30-52 record, the fourth-worst in the West and seventh-lowest in the NBA. Davis played a career-low 61 games before going under the knife for a lingering left knee injury, at which point he revealed that he also had been playing with a torn labrum in his left shoulder for the past three seasons, according to John Reid of theTimes Picayune. The five-man lineup of Jrue Holiday, Eric Gordon, Tyreke Evans, Ryan Anderson and Davis—ostensibly the best group the Pelicans could trot out last season—played just 33 minutes together all year, posting a whopping net rating of plus-30.2. Those five missed a combined 148 of 410 possible games, however, with Evans (57), Gordon (37) and Davis (21) accounting for a majority of the lost time.

While Gordon and Anderson escaped from the wreckage relatively unscathed — each signed a contract with the Houston Rockets this offseason worth north of $50 million — the same can’t be said for Davis. In fact, by virtue of missing out on an All-Star Game nod or a spot on the All-NBA teams, the “Rose Rule” in his five-year extension never went into effect, costing him roughly $25 million. His leadership came into question. Though he’s still widely considered among the game’s elite talents, he fell from No. 3 in Sports Illustrated‘s rankings of the Top 100 NBA players prior to the 2015-16 season to No. 8 this year, marking a three-year low.

For Davis, the 2016-17 campaign represents a chance to reverse the downward trajectory of both his own league-wide reputation and that of the Pelicans. It’s a chance to remind everyone that before Karl-Anthony Towns and Joel Embiid stole the hearts of Basketball Twitter with unfathomable highlight-reel plays, Davis was the one who appeared to be on the precipice of revolutionizing expectations for modern big men. His frustrating inability to stay healthy and the Pelicans’ significant regression sent his stock plummeting more so than his actual on-court impact.

In fact, Davis’ 2015-16 season wasn’t all that far off from the year prior in terms of per-game production — 24.3 points, 10.3 rebounds and 2.0 blocks in 35.5 minutes — and he even unsheathed newfound three-point range, setting career highs in both treys made (35) and attempted (108). He became one of just 11 players in NBA history to have three or more seasons averaging at least 20 points, 10 rebounds and two blocks, the other 10 of whom are already Hall-of-Famers (Shaquille O’Neal, Hakeem Olajuwon and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, among others) or are surefire inductees (Tim Duncan and Dwight Howard).

Here’s the scary part: Davis doesn’t turn 24 until March.

Individual accomplishments will only take the Kentucky product so far, though. For years, Kevin Love put up huge numbers on a mediocre Minnesota Timberwolves team, but his failure to lead them to the playoffs once during his six-year tenure in Minneapolis cast doubt upon his status as a true superstar. Davis, having already guided New Orleans to one playoff berth, won’t have that enormous anchor weighing him down, but the Pelicans will still only go as far as he drags them.

Heading into 2016-17, expectations are far lower for Davis and the Pelicans. The Westgate SuperBook set New Orleans’ over-under at 36.5 wins, ahead of only the Phoenix Suns, Los Angeles Lakers, Sacramento Kings and Denver Nuggets in the West. Their updated title odds (via ESPN.com’s Ben Fawkes) give the Pelicans a 60-1 chance to win the West—tied with the Minnesota Timberwolves, Houston Rockets and Memphis Grizzlies—and 100-1 odds to emerge as NBA champions in 2017.

Accordingly, Davis isn’t setting his sights on the Larry O’Brien Trophy this year.

“We’ve got to start somewhere,” Davis told reporters during media day. “We were getting to that point — but then injuries happened. We don’t have to start all the way over, but we have to get back on track. I think this year’s going to get us back on track, for us to keep going forward to what our ultimate goal is, to win a championship.”

For New Orleans to move back into the playoff conversation, the improvement has to start with defense. On a per-100-possession basis, the Pelicans hemorrhaged the third-most points in the league last year, ahead of only the Lakers and the Brooklyn Nets. The year prior, they partially covered up their 22nd-ranked defense with the league’s ninth-best offense, but their ghastly defense and mediocre offense this past season gave them the NBA’s fifth-worst net rating.

The defensive slippage in 2015-16 started with Davis, who earned a second-team All-Defensive nod the year prior.  Advanced metrics frowned upon Davis’ defensive output this past season compared to that of the year prior: He ranked second among all power forwards in ESPN.com’s Defensive Real Plus-Minus in 2014-15, but he plunged to 16th this past season.

As FiveThirtyEight’s Neil Paine noted, that defensive regression couldn’t be pinned entirely on New Orleans’ other lackluster defenders, either:

"…The whole point of a metric like RPM is to filter out the distorting effects of a player’s teammates using a complex, regression-based methodology to isolate individual performance. And those stats say Davis’s defense is trending in the wrong direction: Among big men with as many minutes as Davis this season, only OKC’s Serge Ibaka has seen a bigger drop in defensive RPM since last season."

The Pelicans recalibrated the construction of their roster over the offseason, bringing in smothering wings such as E’Twaun Moore and Solomon Hill, while letting the offensively minded Gordon and Anderson walk in free agency. In theory, swapping out poor defenders for strong defenders should reduce the number of plays in which Davis is forced to cover up for a teammate’s mistake, thus improving his own defensive metrics. Then again, with both Jrue Holiday and Tyreke Evans sidelined indefinitely to start the season, generating reliable offense outside of Davis could prove to be a far greater challenge initially.

Injuries have already reared their ugly head once again for Davis, too, as he suffered a Grade 2 right ankle sprain during a preseason contest against the Houston Rockets in Beijing, putting his availability for the season opener in doubt. He’s expected to miss 10-15 days, according to The Undefeated’s Marc J. Spears, but he conceded Friday that he can’t say for certain when he’ll be back on the floor.

“You don’t want this injury to linger three or four weeks into the season,” Davis told reporters. “I just have to keep listening to the doctors and trainers to what the best option. Right now we still have the timetable 10 to 14 days and we’ll see where it goes from there.”

While the ankle ailment shouldn’t sideline him for too long during the regular season (if at all), it only adds to the laundry list of injuries Davis has suffered throughout his young career:

If Davis avoids complications while recovering from this ankle sprain and manages to stave off any further injuries, he’ll have a chance to reclaim his spot toward the top of the league’s superstar hierarchy. Another injury-plagued season, however, would cast doubt upon whether he’ll ever be able to make it through a full 82-game season healthy.

Davis isn’t the only Pelican searching for redemption in 2016-17, though. Lance Stephenson and Terrence Jones, both of whom found lukewarm interest on the free-agent market this summer, are likewise aiming to prove their worth league-wide.

For Jones, his arrival in New Orleans is a chance to resuscitate his career alongside his former frontcourt partner at Kentucky in Davis. Two years ago, Jones looked like the Houston Rockets’ power forward of the future, having averaged 12.1 points, 6.9 rebounds and 1.3 blocks in 27.3 minutes across 76 games. Two injury-plagued seasons later, in which he missed 81 of a possible 164 contests, Houston made no effort to retain Jones, declining to extend him a qualifying offer heading into free agency. Rather than pursue the highest-paying contract on the market, Jones opted to sign a one-year deal with the Pelicans in part to reunite with Davis, according to ESPN.com’s Marc Stein.

While the Pelicans figure to begin the year with Davis starting at the 4 alongside either Omer Asik or Alexis Ajinca, Jones should have an opportunity to carve out minutes as a backup 4. If New Orleans head coach Alvin Gentry opts to start Davis at the 5 on occasion — something he’s open to, according to ESPN.com’s Justin Verrier — Jones could work his way into a substantial role. Regardless of whether he starts or comes off the bench, the 24-year-old Oregon native must prove that he can stay healthy and emerge as a productive rotation member to drum up free-agent interest in him next summer.

Stephenson, meanwhile, isn’t even guaranteed to be on the Pelicans’ roster in two weeks, having signed a one-year, $1.2 million deal with only $100,000 in guaranteed money in early September. Like Jones, Stephenson looked like a legitimate up-and-coming stud two years ago, having averaged 13.8 points, 7.2 assists and 4.6 rebounds during his final season with the Indiana Pacers in 2013-14, but he’s since bounced around to the Charlotte Hornets, Los Angeles Clippers and Memphis Grizzlies in the ensuing two seasons. His decision to turn down the Pacers’ five-year, $44 million offer in the summer of 2014 continues to haunt him, but there’s a golden opportunity awaiting him in New Orleans if he can make the final 15-man roster.

With Evans recovering from knee surgery and Holiday tending to his wife, who is set to undergo surgery on a brain tumor in the coming weeks, the Pelicans are in desperate need of offensive creators until those two return. Tim Frazier and Langston Galloway figure to carry the mail as the primary ball-handlers in Holiday’s absence, but if Stephenson can recapture his 2013-14 form while fitting within Gentry’s system, he could likewise spark some league-wide intrigue when he becomes a free agent again next summer.

“You know, nothing was promised to those guys,” general manager Dell Demps told reporters in reference to Stephenson and Jones during media day. “They’re going to come in, compete and it’s going to be how they fit in, their contributions. They both participated in our offseason voluntary workouts and they both actually looked good in the workouts. We’re hoping to get the best versions of themselves, and if so, I think that will be good for the Pelicans.”

For the Pelicans to find themselves back in the playoff mix, they’ll need Davis to put the injury bug behind him and reestablish himself as the world-devouring force of nature he was in 2014-15. Until Holiday and Evans return, though, Davis will be in desperate need of sidekicks outside of No. 6 overall pick Buddy Hield, who enters the season as one of the Rookie of the Year front-runners. If Stephenson and Jones can provide that extra punch, New Orleans may well bounce back from its disappointing 2015-16 campaign, putting Davis back where he belongs: in the conversation as of the NBA’s top players.

Unless otherwise noted, all statistics via NBA.com or Basketball-Reference.com. All contract information via Spotrac.