NBA Tank Rankings — it persists

5. New Orleans Pelicans

Who won the Boogie Cousins trade? If we go by record alone, it appears to be the Hornets, Wolves, Nets, Nuggets, Rockets, Mavericks, Thunder, Spurs, and the Jazz twice. New Orleans and Sacramento are a combined 3-10 since the trade, and both are enjoying a pleasant water slide toward the bottom the standings, except instead of pleasant it’s mind-numbing and instead of water it’s the sludgy mix of ginger ale, leaf dust, and sweat that you need to suck out of your car’s seat cushions after a 24 pack of soda freezes and explodes overnight.

One could go game theory with this and say that both the Pelicans and Kings acted in their own self-interest and in turn the choices they made inevitably made them worse, but there are two problems with that.

That may not necessarily be the case, and this is just growing pains.

The word “theory” has been so tragically beaten and broken that it no longer means an exhaustively tested hypothesis that has not been proven wrong. It means “dumb idea to explain a thing I don’t understand.” I have a theory of gravity. I also have a theory that America would have been better off if the gold standard had been replaced with tiny patches velcro (only the coarse side. If we use the soft side, other countries will think we’re weak.)

The Pelicans have some time to figure out how they are with Boogie and if it will work out long term. While that happens, however, the L’s will keep piling up and folding over on themselves to form tiny mishapen squares like this L˥. If someone outside of their core three could play a level or two above miserable, that would help.