Why Pelicans should shift focus to Brandon Ingram trade as injury-cursed season slips away

USATSI

If you're a New Orleans Pelicans fan, cover your ears. Or eyes. Or preferably both, as another injury has come down conveyor belt. This time it's spark-plug point guard Jose Alvarado, who will miss at least six weeks with a hamstring injury, according to ESPN

Here's a quick inventory of New Orleans' injury shelf: Dejounte Murray broke his hand on opening night and isn't expected back until at least late November; Zion Williamson is out indefinitely (hamstring); CJ McCollum is out with an adductor strain; Herb Jones started a two-to-four-week absence on Oct. 29, the same day that McCollum went down, with a mild rotator cuff tear; Jordan Hawkins is out with a back strain. And now Alvarado, who is a critical loss. 

The Pelicans are 3-8 with the 29th-ranked defense in the league. They won their first two games of the season over the Bulls and Blazers -- not exactly measuring-stick victories -- and have gone in the tank since, losing eight of their last nine by a combined 126 points. Once again, optimism has turned sour courtesy of a rash of injuries for a Pelicans team that has just never been able to avoid this bug. 

Two years ago they were near the top of the West standings before the turn of the calendar when Zion went down with a hamstring injury that wound up sidelining him for the rest of the season. The Pelicans failed to make the playoffs in 2023.

Last year, Williamson, who played in just 85 games through his first three seasons, got everyone's hopes up after he played in 70 regular-season games and dropped 40 points on the Lakers in the play-in game only to go down yet again with a hamstring strain in the final minutes. Without Williamson, the Pelicans got swept in the first round by the top-seeded Thunder.

It has just never happened for Zion or, by extension, this Pelicans team. They loaded up with a ton of young talent and draft picks after trading Anthony Davis, and added a bunch more draft capital to their chest with the Jrue Holiday trade to Milwaukee. They made trades for major players like McCollum and Murray. They have the talent to force you into believing in them even though they have never been able to stay healthy enough to see anything through. 

You can fool yourself into an optimistic state again if you're into that sort of self deception. You can say it's still early, which it is, and convince yourself that Zion and Murray will get back at some point and in this age of playoff parity, anything is possible if New Orleans gets hot at the right time. Sure. Whatever you say. 

The reality is we have no idea when Zion will be back, and even when he does, we have no idea when he'll go down again. At a certain point, depending on any level of sustained Zion health is bordering on a Kawhi-level of ignorance. It sucks, but it is what it is. If the man isn't hurt, he most likely will be soon. 

And without Zion, this isn't a viable team. Plain and simple. All these other injuries are just sinking a boat that is simply trying to stay afloat until its best player gets back on deck. By the time a viable roster is on the floor together, New Orleans, which is already hanging out down in the Western cellar alongside Utah and Portland, will likely be too far back to make any sort of realistic run at a top-six seed considering the extreme saturation of really good teams above them. 

And so it'll back to the play-in. At best. Do we really want to do this again? Coming into this season, the biggest question mark regarding the Pelicans, perhaps other than their trying to go at it without a viable starting center, was whether they could find a palatable trade for Brandon Ingram. That now needs to become the main focus. 

Ingram is on an expiring deal and is going to want a maximum contract next season. The Pelicans will, for all intents and purposes, be forced into paying him something close to that max if it doesn't find a trade in the meantime. 

Brandon Ingram NO • SF • #14 PPG22.9RPG5.9APG5.0 View Profile

Ingram is a very good player. But he doesn't fit with Zion. They both need the ball to be the best version of themselves, and Zion, even with the virtually guaranteed injury depreciation that has to be factored into his value, is still the better player. Plus, the Pelicans have already paid him the max. That bed was made a long time ago. 

The Pelicans will likely have to take a haircut on an Ingram deal. As good as he is -- and he is a top-flight shotmaker and a good playmaker for others off the attention he draws as a scorer -- not a lot of teams are looking to build around his archetype. He's methodical. He lives in the mid range. He's not quite good enough to really lift a contending team at the brand of usage he requires, and handing him to the keys of anything less than a contender is, well, just another New Orleans situation. 

Given that he's going to want a big contract this summer, who is going to give away real assets for that kind of player? If anyone would, Ingram would already have been traded. So again, New Orleans is going to take a haircut on any deal they strike, but they need to do it. If this season ends up turning around and somehow everyone gets, and stays, healthy, great. They are still a very good team without Ingram, who wasn't even in closing lineups at points in the playoffs last year. 

But more likely, this season is shaping up as a wash anyway. New Orleans owns, most likely, seven first-round picks between 2025 and 2031 (they would have eight if Milwaukee's 2025 pick conveys, but it would have to fall in the top four for that to happen), including swap rights with the Bucks in 2026. Get whatever you can for Ingram, and then start packaging whatever you have to for that "get over the hump" player in subsequent dealings. 

Is this a tank? Not necessarily. Again, the Pelicans can win without Ingram if everyone gets healthy. But that would be a bonus. This is like an insurance policy on the more likely outcome, which is that they'll be in too deep a hole by the time everyone gets healthy anyway, and even then, how long will they really stay intact? 

So they stock up for next season while also positioning themselves for a lottery pick, which, on this draft, is a major asset to hold. That's the smart play here. Because this season just keeps going from bad to worse for what feels like the perpetually cursed Pelicans. 

Why Pelicans should shift focus to Brandon Ingram trade as injury-cursed season slips away

Why Pelicans should shift focus to Brandon Ingram trade as injury-cursed season slips away

Why Pelicans should shift focus to Brandon Ingram trade as injury-cursed season slips away

Why Pelicans should shift focus to Brandon Ingram trade as injury-cursed season slips away

Why Pelicans should shift focus to Brandon Ingram trade as injury-cursed season slips away