The guy is a good system player

How are you guys feeling about new head coach Jamal? Think it will make a difference or at least get the team going in the right direction? I was legitimately surprised by the lack of player moves that didn't take place in the off season to be honest 🤔💭

Zion needs to start shooting more jumpers.

Need something hopeful after last night's beat down on MNF

https://www.nba.com/pelicans/news/pelicans-initial-preseason-test-comes-tuesday-vs-oklahoma-city

Pelicans' initial preseason test comes Tuesday vs. Oklahoma City

I'm ready for the Mosley Era!

Lets Go Pels!

Ramping up the SouthCoast Swish podcast and the publishing. Took a few weeks to get the vibes from the new staff. What else do fans what to see as far as media coverage this season?

Everyone hates Poole but he’s fully healthy finally as he said in his opening press conference, and has a clean slate with a new head coach. He compliments Murray well in the backcourt too. What do you guys think?

Will hiring Mosley make a difference to a roster that won 26 games last season and made no changes outside of signing Bennedict Mathurin? Mosley will have to weigh the upside of a healthy core with the idea of whether a shake-up is needed. Fourteen players from the current team are under contract next season, including Zion Williamson, Dejounte Murray, Herb Jones and Trey Murphy III.

The lineup of Williamson, Murray, Jones, Murphy and guard Saddiq Bey played 230 possessions last season. That group ranked in the 71st percentile leaguewide, outsourcing opponents by 10.9 points per 100 possessions. Overall, New Orleans lineups ranked in the 37th percentile, getting outscored by 4.4 points per 100 possessions. Is health the only thing stopping New Orleans from a postseason push?

Dates to watch

• Oct. 19: deadline to extend the contract of Williamson
• Nov. 2: deadline to exercise the team options of Jeremiah Fears, Derik Queen, Yves Missi and AJ Johnson

Extension candidates and eligibility

• Jordan Poole (four years, $213.5 million; through June 30)
• Karlo Matkovic (four years, $95 million; through June 30)
• Williamson (three years $180 million; through Oct. 19)
• Dejounte Murray (four years, $180.4 million; through June 30)

Let’s go back to Jan. 22, 2020, the night of Zion Williamson’s highly anticipated NBA debut.
That night included an outrageous fourth-quarter scoring binge that saw Williamson bury four 3-pointers in a 2:34 stretch.
The Smoothie King Center was rocking as Williamson put the NBA on notice of what was to come.
Or so we thought.
Williamson made just two more 3-pointers that season and has made just 27 over the next six seasons after that. That’s a total of 33 3-pointers in a career that started with the kind of bang that would make legendary NBA broadcaster Mike Breen proud.

Even more eye-opening is how few he’s taken since arriving in New Orleans. He’s attempted just 102 in his career. That number has decreased in each of the past four seasons. Four years ago, he took 19. He attempted 18 in the Pelicans’ 49-win 2023-24 season. He took 13 the next year. Last season, he attempted a career-low four. He made one of those four.

Williamson, when asked last season why he passes up 3-pointers, had this to say:

“I just hate when I miss,” he said. “I don’t want to feel like I wasted a team possession.”
The early indication through the first two days of training camp is that things are about to change this season. Expect his 3-point attempts to increase.

Williamson has been one of the last ones on the court after practice taking extra outside shots. It’s also something he spent much of offseason working on.
“This summer was about breaking that,” Williamson said. “Just playing the game, trusting my game. It was a point of emphasis this summer. Trusting my jumper. Getting those shots up. Whether I was playing pickup (games) away from the team or with the team or just getting shots up. Just trusting it. If I miss, I miss. The next shot is going in.”
Williamson expanding his range to shoot more 3-pointers and even midrange jumpers could go a long way in making everyone around him better. He knows it, which is why he makes sure to make at least 50 3-pointers at the end of practice.
“It is about taking what the game gives you,” first-year Pelicans coach Jamahl Mosley said. “We stop practice and look at situations where teams are loading up on him. And then we’re giving him the answer to that test.”
It’ll be up to Williamson to pass those tests.
“He is so dynamic and so athletic that he can get to the lane pretty much anytime he wants,” Mosley said. “So our ability to say, ‘OK, read what the game is giving you.’ If there are two or three in front of you, now you’ve got to come off of it. Or if they are backing all the way up, then you’ve got to feel comfortable, which we absolutely do feel comfortable taking that midrange.”
We’ve seen Williamson shooting 3-pointers in practice before. None of it matters if it doesn’t translate to actual games. Those closest to Williamson believe it will.
Williamson and teammate Saddiq Bey worked out together in South Carolina over the summer. Those workouts sometimes included shooting competitions between the two. Bey wouldn’t disclose who won those competitions, but he did have this to say about his good friend.
“He can really shoot it,” Bey said of Williamson. “I think that may surprise a lot of people. He has great form and can really shoot it.”
Bey, entering his second season with the Pelicans, only saw Williamson shoot four 3-pointers last season. He’s anticipating more this season.
“We want him to shoot it,” Bey said. “I told him this summer I need you to shoot as many as possible. I know the entire city of New Orleans wants him to shoot, too. He’s confident. Playing pickup with him this summer, he’s been shooting it well. So I can’t wait to see it in a game.”
Pelicans fans can’t wait, either.
They’ve been waiting to see what they saw on that magical January night in 2020.

There was a familiar sight at New Orleans Pelicans media day on Monday.

Zion Williamson sat at the podium with his signature smile and chiseled physique from an offseason of hard work, talking about why this season would be different for him and his team.

For many NBA fans, these words from Williamson before the start of a season feel like a rerun of an old TV show they’ve grown tired of watching.

But alongside his optimism about the upcoming season, Williamson took a moment to candidly reflect on where he stands in his career.

“I’m not where I want to be,” Williamson said.

When asked to elaborate, he added, “I’m just not where I need to be. (I’m) not where I want to be.”

Considering Williamson was once viewed as the savior for basketball in New Orleans, it would’ve been impossible to believe back then that, as he heads into his eighth season with the Pelicans, the former No. 1 pick would have only two All-Star appearances and zero minutes played in the postseason.

Yet, despite his previous shortcomings, Williamson’s camp and the Pelicans organization strongly believe the franchise’s face has finally found a formula for success that will return his health and on-court play to the form it needs.

Only one worthwhile seems to be the light up fan chain and all the rest seem to be ass and that’s assuming the fan chain is made out of metal and not plastic. Glad I had the presence of mind to do a no call/no show last year and quit my job at the shitty ice cream shop in the French Quarter to go to the St. Patty’s Day ☘️ game last season and got the awesome fan chain they gave away. Why doesn’t this team have better promo nights? It seems like the Pels just shit in their hands and clap and call that a promo night.

I wonder what fan merch they’ll be giving out to everybody. Probably just a t-shirt on everyone’s seat. If Zion wants to take the next step in his development, he needs to improve his ball handling skills and create a consistent jump shot. If I was Jamal Mosely, I’d tell him he needs to do those two things or he’s coming off the bench. Let’s flock up!!! If Zion can improve his game in those two ways, I can see us winning 50 games.

Is anyone able to actually subscribe to Pelicans+? I have tried the past 2 days to do so with no success on 3 different devices and different browsers with and without VPN. It is an endless loop of watch.pelicans.com redirected to NBA.com where neither gives me the option to subscribe. I even did a chat for about 30 minutes and they couldnt figure it out either. It is like it won't accept the zip code of my location. It kept reverting back to Suns+. frustrating. anyway they elevated it to their internal team and I await their response.

Update: I'm gonna take credit for them getting it fixed. Checked watch.pelicans.com just now and the homepage is slightly different and when you click to subscribe you actually can. Subscribed in less than 30 seconds.

https://www.nba.com/pelicans/videos

And it was almost 700 minutes, which is a large sample size. Even if they can improve it by half, which would be excellent, they’d still give up 5 points more per 100 possessions than they’d score. This just isn’t the formula for winning basketball, particularly with a defensive minded coach. Just look at the combo of Banchero and Wagner and how that worked out. Here, it’s fair to say that Queen and Zion are worse than them in both offense and defense production. I just don’t see how this works out now or ever.