The worst NBA Draft picks for every team

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27. New Orleans Pelicans: Collective Foolishness

The Pels tried their hardest to bumble their way off this list, but they’re not getting away that easy.

On one hand, no, the Pelicans haven’t blown any draft picks by picking the wrong guy, even going back to their days as the New Orleans Hornets. That doesn’t mean they haven’t massively screwed up.

Over the last nine years, the only first rounders taken with picks owned by New Orleans that played a single game for the team are Anthony Davis and Buddy Hield, the later of which was traded midway through his rookie year. Every other pick was dealt away, most of them in a failed effort to surround AD with a winner.

Given his new confines in LA, this plan seems not to have worked.

Sure, it wasn’t all bad — Nerlens Noel for Jrue Holiday worked out great — but the rest of the pick-for-player trades were failures, the collective ineptitude of which resulted in a generational superstar getting dealt and gets New Orleans a spot here.

Worst of all, for their buffoonery, karma rewarded them with Zion freaking Williamson. There is no god.

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