Things could not have gotten off to a worse start this season for the New Orleans Pelicans, who recently dropped to 0-4 in a road loss to the Denver Nuggets, a game in which DeAndre Jordan started in the year 2025. The Pelicans have managed to stay relatively healthy through the first week of the year but still look nowhere close to a competitive team, let alone a contending one, in the West.
At least the team could theoretically bottom out and tank for a top pick in next year's draft, right?
Wrong, thanks to a series of disastrous decisions made by general manager Joe Dumars over the offseason, including trading the Indiana Pacers' 2026 first round pick back to them in exchange for the number 23 pick in this year's draft, before trading that pick and an unprotected 2026 pick swap with the Milwaukee Bucks to the Atlanta Hawks in order to move up to number 13 this year and draft Derik Queen.
In other words, the Pelicans could go 0-82 this year, and they would not be able to cash in on that ineptitude with their own draft pick. Meanwhile, the team also could have benefited from holding onto the Pacers pick in the first place, considering that Indiana is now playing without Tyrese Haliburton and has suffered a winless start to the 2025-26 season.
A horrible spot than the Pelicans
All told, there's a legitimate argument that the Pelicans are in the worst spot that a professional sports organization could be in, filled with expensive contracts, unreliable “star” players, and without much of any future draft assets to show for it.
The most obvious short-term solution for the Pelicans would be to trade Zion Williamson and try to get some draft help back that way, but at this point, it's unclear how much the former number one overall pick would even bring back, considering his well-chronicled injury troubles, which have already begun to flare up this year.
Things don't get any easier from here for New Orleans, as they'll next hit the floor on Friday evening on the road against the Los Angeles Clippers.
