The Pelicans have a bevy of future draft picks and utilizing those to trade for an established star or top starter may accelerate the timeline for the team to truly contend with Brandon Ingram and Zion Williamson. However, vice president of basketball operations David Griffin sounds like he’s being patient with regard to cashing in those chips.
“I’ve never really been able to say unequivocally ‘go flip the switch.’ LeBron [James] is the only player in the NBA whose presence alone makes you a Finals contender. So when LeBron came back to Cleveland, it was time to rock and roll,” Griffin said (via The Ringer).
“I don’t know if I do know when to flip the switch. But I know when not to. I hope that this group grows and develops in the way we anticipate and that it will become fairly obvious when we should cash in some of those chips. In the presence of a sound process, decisions often make themselves. I hope we’re able to bring that to fruition.”
Choosing when to go “all-in” will be a major inflection point in Griffin’s tenure in New Orleans.
“We were very intentional this offseason. If you judge our offseason by our ability to win the championship this year, we failed,” Pelicans executive vice president of basketball operations David Griffin told me over the phone in December. “But if you judge our offseason over the long haul with our ability to shape the team and change the mix, we’ve got a baseline that we feel really comfortable about.”
The Pelicans had expectations of competing for the playoffs, though the team appears to be far from that goal, sitting at 5-10 on the young season.
