The New Orleans Pelicans officially hired Joe Dumars to lead basketball operations on Tuesday following the dismissal of David Griffin. NOLA replaces one former champ with another in the front office, leaning on the unique qualifications of a Hall of Fame player with 14 years of NBA exec experience under his belt.
Dumars, a Louisiana native, has spent the last few years in the NBA's league office. Now he returns to team-specific duties, tasked with making the best of a rotten situation. The Pelicans aren't short on talent, but with Zion Williamson marred in constant injury concerns, it's unclear how exactly New Orleans builds off of this dispiriting 21-win season.
Hall of Famer Joe Dumars is finalizing a deal to become the new president of basketball operations of the New Orleans Pelicans, sources tell ESPN. Dumars was president of the Pistons from 2000-14, building the 2004 Detroit championship team. Now returns home to Louisiana. pic.twitter.com/SrgfHBbHTP
— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) April 15, 2025
A Detroit Pistons legend who went on to run the front office in Detroit for more than a decade, Dumars' resume is... mixed. He built the Pistons' championship-winning roster in 2004, a team that still stands as the exception to most historical trends. He also selected Darko Miličić with the second overall pick the summer prior. That will go down as one of the biggest NBA Draft whiffs of all time.
Dumars is a product of the physical, nasty 90s. He was a Bad Body Piston, and embodied everything that entailed on the court. He built some great teams and some not-so-great teams as Detroit's lead exec. It's fair to wonder if he's up to speed with the changing landscape of basketball, or if he will get stuck in outmoded ways. Only time will tell.
That said, here are a few potential NBA Draft catastrophes New Orleans should mentally prepare for.
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3. Pelicans gamble too high on international wing Noa Essengue
The French NBA takeover is well underway with Victor Wembanyama and Zaccharie Risacher thriving as back-to-back No. 1 picks. The league has gotten much better at pinpointing elite international talent in recent years, and basketball as a sport continues to expand its global footprint.
That said, Pistons fans are still scarred by the ill-fated selection of Serbian 7-footer Darko Miličić back in 2003. The game has changed dramatically since Miličić was such an appealing prospect, but the idea of selecting a little-known overseas bust way too high will understandably haunt New Orleans fans.
Noa Essengue is a genuine lottery talent with a bright future in the NBA, so we are projecting worst-case outcomes here. If New Orleans lands somewhere in the top-six as expected, Essengue falls into "so crazy it might work" category. That is too lofty an evaluation, but scouts are bound to be taken by Essengue's fluid athleticism and prototypical size on the wing. If there's an international prospect destined to surge on draft boards between now and June, it's Essengue.
He is less polished than many of his potential lottery peers at 18 years old. His development would require a patient hand, something the Pelicans don't necessarily have with Zion's finite timeline. Essengue can run the floor in transition, clean up on backdoor cuts and offensive rebounds, and defend several positions, but it remains to be seen if he's sharp enough as a shooter and decision-maker to contribute right away.
2. Khaman Maluach is awesome, but there are also worrisome Darko vibes
Again, we are reaching for the most nightmarish outcomes possible. Duke's Khaman Maluach is the No. 7-ranked prospect on FanSided's big board and he carries one of the highest ceilings in the NBA Draft. If the Pelicans land on him as the best selection in the 4-6 range, not a soul could blame them. And yet, there are some pesky Darko vibes lurking beneath the surface.
Maluach has all the physical tools a team could hope for at center. He's 7-foot-2 and 250 pounds with a gaping 7-foot-5 wingspan. He is incredibly fluid, with touch at the free throw line and from mid-range that should translate to 3-point success down the road. His shot-blocking instincts are solid. He doesn't foul a lot for such a lanky 18-year-old. There are tons of positive signs.
Where Maluach struggled at times with Duke, however, was physicality. He was outworked on the glass by Houston's 6-foot-7 frontcourt in the Final Four. For all his success on the offensive glass, Maluach's defensive rebounding numbers were middling for such a physically imposing presence in college basketball.
There is tape of Maluach facing up and scoring on straight-line drives at lower levels of competition, but he's not especially polished when it comes time to put the rock on the hardwood. He's mostly a catch-and-dunk (or catch-and-shoot) scorer. He has mastered that role, but the upside argument could one day be undermined if Maluach proves too unstable when he catches it without pristine position.
New Orleans whiffing on a 7-foot-2 athletic marvel with their high lottery pick certainly would have a dark poeticism.
1. Collin Murray-Boyles might overlap with Zion Williamson too much
South Carolina sophomore Collin Murray-Boyles has been quietly rising up draft boards despite the Gamecocks' team-wide struggles. He's the No. 4 prospect here at FanSided and there's a good chance he goes a lot higher than folks expect. Murray-Boyles is still 19, and he will light up all the right anayltics models.
Dumars probably isn't an analytics fanatic, but there is something very 90s about Murray-Boyles' game — and this is a positive. He's awesome. At 6-foot-7, Murray-Boyles barely takes 3s and does the majority of his damage around the paint. He's a super polished slasher and post-up threat, comfortable plowing through mismatches and leveraging his burly 231-pound frame to overwhelm rim protectors.
Murray-Boyles was South Carolina's defensive backbone and their primary offensive hub. He can pass on the move, create havoc with his activity level and versatility on the defensive end, and score in bunches, even without a dependable jumper. Some of the higher-ceiling projections liken him to a modern facsimile of Charles Barkley. There are clear parallels to Zion Williamson, although he's not quite on that level, to be clear.
In terms of pure value, CMB is probably a fine pick for the Pelicans. There's a world in which he just overlaps too much with Zion, though. They occupy similar areas of the floor offensively and New Orleans' spacing can already get cramped. If picking Murray-Boyles is what causes a rupture in the Zion experiment and forces NOLA in a new direction, that probably isn't the ideal outcome here.