The New Orleans Pelicans closed out the 2021-22 season giving the Phoenix Suns a run for their money in the first round of the 2022 NBA Playoffs. Heading into the 2022-23 season, there are a couple of big reasons for hope surrounding the Pelicans this season. With the upcoming campaign nearly upon, we will be rolling out our Pelicans bold predictions for the 2022-23 NBA season.

The Pelicans have a strong core group that helped them unexpectedly make a run to the playoffs last season. Of course, they will be adding Zion Williamson to that group, which managed to get to the postseason without him playing a single game last season. The hope is that Williamson will be able to stay on the court and lead the Pelicans up the Western Conference standings this season.

Still, Williamson isn't going to be able to do everything on his own, and the rest of the Pelicans will need to play as well as they did down the stretch last season if they want to achieve their main goals this season. If they can do that, New Orleans could make some serious noise in the Western Conference. Enough said; let's take a look at our predictions and see what the Pelicans could end up accomplishing this season.

3. Pelicans PG CJ McCollum will earn his first All-Star selection

CJ McCollum spent the first eight seasons of his career playing second-fiddle to Damian Lillard on the Portland Trail Blazers. That's not meant to sound like a bad thing, but the Trail Blazers were always going to default to Lillard rather than McCollum when they needed offense. For the first time in his career, McCollum will be the primary ball handler of an offense for a full season with the Pelicans.

McCollum only played in 26 games with the Pelicans last season, but the initial results were rather encouraging. In those 26 games, he averaged 24.3 points per game and 5.8 assists per game on 49.3 percent shooting from the field. All those numbers would be career-highs for McCollum if he was able to keep that up over a full season.

McCollum will assume a similar role as he did last season, with Williamson taking a chunk of the scoring away from himself, though. If McCollum can clock in at around 25 points per game and six or seven assists per game, it will be hard to deny him a spot on his first career All-Star team. It says here that McCollum will earn that elusive All-Star selection with a strong performance in the first half of the season.

2. Pelicans PF Zion Williamson will play in 65 games

Zion Williamson is set to return after missing the entire 2021-22 season, and as previously mentioned, his return could be exactly what New Orleans needs to take the next step forward as a team this season. The question is whether or not Williamson will actually be able to stay on the court or not, as he has only played in 85 games over the first three seasons of his career.

Williamson's health could end up being the difference between a successful season and a failed season for the Pelicans. He's shown the ability to be one of the most explosive scorers in the league when he's on the court, but as we see with the total number of games he's played early in his career, he's rarely been on the court.

With load management and saving players for the playoffs now a common occurrence in the NBA, players rarely play in 82 games anymore, and it's unlikely Williamson will be able to achieve that this season. Playing somewhere between 60 and 70 games is usually the target, and Williamson will land smack dab in the middle of that total, playing 65 games and leading the Pelicans into the playoffs.

1. The Pelicans will beat the Suns in the first round of the 2023 NBA Playoffs

As mentioned earlier, the Pelicans gave the Suns quite a run for their money in their first round series last season, and while they didn't beat them, it showed to the rest of the league that New Orleans is on the come up. After a strong 2022-23 regular season campaign, the Pelicans will finish as the fifth seed in the Western Conference, meaning they won't have to win in the Play-In Tournament to make it into the playoffs this time around.

Coincidentally enough, their opponent will be the Suns, making it a rematch of the first-round series from last season. This time, though, the Pelicans are in a much better place to be able to beat Phoenix, and they end up eliminating the Suns in a hard-fought seven game series to advance to the semifinals.

New Orleans will ultimately come up short against the number one seed, the Los Angeles Clippers, in the semis, but they let every other team in the NBA know that they mean business with their strong season. The Pelicans may not win it all this season, but they prove that they will be a contender for many upcoming seasons.