Direction and Identity
As we are now only a few weeks from the Pelicans first game of what will likely be another weird season due to COVID, I find myself reflecting on previous seasons and how I felt entering opening night. Like many of you, I have entered many seasons pessimistic. We do not have to go too far back to remember lineups that looked like this.
The Hornets/Pelicans have started seasons with key contributors injured, stars with contract uncertainty, and rosters full of fringe NBA players over the last decade. Personally, my emotions have run the gamut from disappointed to excited, from downright annoyed to indifferent. But not this year. While I still have a lot of questions about exactly which direction the roster is headed, there seems to be two things this version of the organization has that not all previous versions did, organization direction and team identity. I have been critical of some of the moves made by Griffin. It is unclear to me whether the cache of future draft picks we own will be useful or useless in the grand scheme of things. Many of them are so far down the road that it is hard to make any assumptions in either case. Griffin seems to be a cautious and calculated leader and that is not a bad thing. Having said all of that, what this team is not doing is tanking. There was a real emphasis on retooling while keeping a competitive roster on the floor. As both a fan and someone covering the team, I can appreciate that. I believe the hiring of Stan Van Gundy provides the identity. SVG is not here to mess around or sludge through a protracted rebuild. He is a winning head coach. If it was not evident through his resume, it should have at least caught your eye when he ran the team through a 3-hour defense only practice this weekend. Identity and accountability, folks.
Optimism manifests itself in ways outside of increased ticket sales on more Twitter hits, too. Last season the Pels set a franchise record for nationally televised games. I was interested to see how things would shake out this year because, if we are being honest, many of those national TV games last year were scheduled with the expectation of seeing Zion destroy souls and that didn’t happen due to injury. But nonetheless, looking at the first half schedule released on Friday, the Pelicans were rewarded with half of their currently scheduled 37 games to be broadcast by one of the major networks or NBATV. That is HUGE. Interestingly, the first of those games is in Tampa, Fl against the Raptors (again). The Raptors are playing home games in Tampa until travel restrictions in Canada are lifted. We should all be prepared for a weird beginning to this season.
Zion is healthy, BI is paid, and Steven Adams is a grown ass man. These things are certainties today. Hopefully, we can add more things to that list over the next few weeks and the Pels can hit the ground running to start the season. If nothing else, the organization has a direction, the team will have an identity, and I have some cautious optimism.
