Noise about Zion Williamson's future shouldn't affect Pelicans' mission - crescentcitysports.com

(Photo: Stephen Lew).

Chris Paul played six seasons for the New Orleans Hornets.

Anthony Davis played seven seasons in New Orleans.

Zion Williamson has played two seasons here and counting.

He isn’t going anywhere for a while – if at all.

And yet Pelicans news these days seems mostly viewed through the prism of how it affects the threat that Williamson, who isn’t yet 21 years old, will walk away or force a trade that takes him elsewhere for the prime of his career.

It becomes even more difficult to escape that prism when Davis wins his first NBA championship – as he did last summer in his first season with the Los Angeles Lakers.

And when Paul leads the Phoenix Suns into the Western Conference finals on a roll that suggests he might be on his way to his first NBA championship – as is happening right now.

New Orleans couldn’t keep Paul and it couldn’t keep Davis. Both are now with teams better than the Pelicans.

So, naturally, there is a fear that it won’t be able to keep Williamson either.

Perhaps it will, perhaps it won’t.

All we know at this point is that we don’t know yet know what will happen with Williamson and the Pelicans down the road.

Realistically, the soonest he could try to leave would be as a restricted free agent after two more seasons in New Orleans – but the Pelicans could then match any offer and keep him.

Getting to that point would require him sacrificing millions of dollars by turning down a max contract extension offer after next season from the team that drafted him, which no other team would be able to match.

Paul took the max money.

So did Davis.

So too did virtually every other young superstar facing similar decisions with other franchises.

Perhaps Williamson is different. Perhaps not.

Nonetheless the Pelicans have time to convince him to take the money and stay.

If that works – as it did with both Paul and Davis – the Pelicans will have multiple additional years to convince Williamson to stay even longer, perhaps even play the duration of his career with the same team.

Who knows?

But the ghosts of Paul and Davis continue to haunt the franchise and its followers.

Pelicans social media is chronically overwhelmed with hand-wringing, teeth-gnashing, pearl-clutching noise that each Pelicans loss, each Pelicans personnel move that doesn’t work out ideally, each losing season (there have been a grand total of two) pushes Williamson closer to New York, Los Angeles or anywhere other than New Orleans.

The concern is understandable. The prospect of Williamson eventually following the lead of Paul and Davis out of town is real.

But the fear of Williamson leaving is premature – and mostly pointless.

There was a report this week that members of Williamson’s family are disappointed in the franchise’s ability to get the 2019 No. 1 overall draft choice into the playoffs.

Of course they are – just as each Pelicans fan and employee is.

The Pelicans finished 30-42 in Williamson’s rookie season, two-thirds of which he missed because of knee surgery and COVID protocols.

Executive vice president of basketball operations David Griffin responded by firing head coach Alvin Gentry and replacing him with Stan Van Gundy.

That didn’t help appreciably as the team finished 31-41 this past season, though Williamson was much healthier and improved significantly.

The Pelicans and Van Gundy parted ways earlier this week.

And Pelicans social media is again filled with hand-wringing, teeth-gnashing and pearl-clutching noise.

During a conference call Wednesday to discuss Van Gundy’s departure, Griffin was asked about the chronic fear of each organizational misstep further lessening the likelihood of a long-time tenure for Williamson in New Orleans.

Griffin said the Pelicans are not “chasing some invisible clock” and do not feel a sense of “artificial urgency.”

Of course they aren’t and don’t.

Griffin said the organization didn’t have time to waste when it determined that Van Gundy wasn’t the right coach going forward. The reference was not to Williamson’s future but to Griffin’s responsibility to make the Pelicans as good as he can as quickly as he can and for as long as he can.

The flaw in the noise about Williamson’s long-term prospects is the perception that somehow the Pelicans’ day-to-day basketball operations and the possibility of convincing their latest ascending star to sign multiple contract extensions are somehow not the same thing.

They are exactly the same thing.

Obsessing about Williamson’s future in two or seven or 10 years doesn’t produce better personnel decisions or accelerate team development.

The bottom line is the best way that the Pelicans can ensure that Williamson stays in New Orleans for a long, long time is to convince him that he can achieve his loftiest team and individual goals by staying.

The same was true with Paul and Davis and in both instances a front office that Griffin was not a part of failed to do so.

Williamson’s goals and the Pelicans’ goals are the same – “sustainable success” as Griffin puts it, meaning a realistic belief that the team can compete for championships on an annual basis.

The Pelicans have a long way to go to get that point, but they have time, lots of young talent and a boatload of No. 1 draft choices – and now another coaching-hire opportunity – at Griffin’s disposal in order to reach perennial-contender status before the leverage shifts from the organization to the player.

Perhaps Griffin will do a better job of convincing Williamson that he has all that needs right here than Griffin’s predecessors were able to do with Paul and Davis.

Perhaps not.

The point is that Griffin and the Pelicans’ mission day in and day out is to build toward sustainable success as quickly as possible.

And no noise about what happened in the past or might happen in the future should affect that.

Adblock test (Why?)

"about" - Google News
June 19, 2021 at 03:20AM
https://ift.tt/35ygDex

Noise about Zion Williamson's future shouldn't affect Pelicans' mission - crescentcitysports.com
"about" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2MjBJUT


Bagikan Berita Ini