A pair of pairs — Anthony Davis and DeMarcus Cousins and Jrue Holiday and Rajon Rondo — will define the Pelicans’ season.
The Pelicans brought in Cousins from the Kings just before the trade deadline last season and the results down the stretch of the season were decidedly mixed. But after an entire offseason and training camp together, this is make-or-break time for the two all-world big men who, theoretically, have the skills to complement one another perfectly.
New Orleans decided to sign Rondo this offseason, immediately announcing that he would be the starting point guard and Holiday would be moved to the 2, a tactical setup that doesn’t make the same on-paper sense as Davis and Cousins.
The Davis-Cousins combination should be as lethal as any big man pairing in the league. Both can handle the ball as well as most wings and can be primary creators for their team, both can space the floor out to the 3-point line and both can, at times, be scheme-altering defensive forces. Very few teams across the league have high-quality defenders at both the 4 and 5 positions, opening up opportunities for one of Davis and Cousins to feast in a mismatch. While teams have mostly eschewed mismatch basketball in order to create a more team-based offensive system, when a team has two of the five or six most potent offensive big men on their team, it’s hard not to think about the matchup possibilities.
Using them together might create even more havoc, as there are even fewer teams, if any at all, who have the personnel to defend both players on the perimeter and in the paint. Running 4-5 pick-and-rolls with Davis and Cousins, with either man handling the ball, could be devastating with the correct personnel surrounding them. Unfortunately for New Orleans, it doesn’t seem that personnel exists on the roster as currently constructed.
Rondo and Holiday seems okay in a vacuum. Bringing in a pass-first point guard to man the primary ball-handling duties and moving a bigger guard who can shoot off the ball should help both positions, but in this specific case, the Rondo experiment seems doomed to fail yet again. The Pelicans are right to move Holiday into more of a spot-up role, but signing Rondo to run the offense when Davis and Cousins are begging to fill that role doesn’t bode well for the team’s success this season.
The ideal running mates for two elite big men are shooters and perimeter defenders. They have one of each in Holiday — he’s a career 37 percent 3-point shooter and earned a smattering of All-Defense votes in 2016-17 after another great season defending opposing point guards in the stacked Western Conference. They have neither in Rondo, who is as allergic to shooting as any guard in league history and whose defense has severely dropped off since his heyday with the Celtics.
Davis and Cousins had better figure it out, because Cousins could leave at the end of the season in free agency if things don’t get markedly better in New Orleans. If things start out poorly, it could be even faster than that for the mercurial big man. Contending teams would line up for his services, and there are certainly those at the top of the projected standings who have the assets to lure the Pelicans into a deal.
Lingering over the entire franchise is an uncertain ownership and front office structure. The Benson family, which owns both the Pelicans and New Orleans Saints of the NFL, has been riddled with internal lawsuits for the past few years before finally settling out of court earlier this year. Tom Benson, patriarch of the family and majority shareholder in both teams, has in the past been accused of being mentally unfit to run the family’s business assets and was recently unable to remember Davis’ name when deposed in a separate trial, giving rise to some serious concern about Benson’s health and what happens to the Pelicans if he no longer controls the team.
Next: Five big questions from the craziest offseason in NBA history
Earlier this offseason, the Pelicans made the inexplicable decision to retain the services of a doctor who had been fired by the Saints for misdiagnosing injuries on the football field, a choice that reeks of mismanagement at the top. Whether the ownership turmoil will affect the Pelicans on the court remains to be seen, but regardless, it’s not a good sign heading into perhaps the most pivotal season in franchise history.
Add us as a preferred source on Google