Since the team is already on vacation, I think it's the perfect time to asses the current state of the roster and to try to discuss about our vision of the team moving forward and come up with a plan moving forward.
First let's tackle the case of our two franchise players on offense since it was the biggest issue since the trade :
AD :
In every catergory I will list : PPP frequency and percentile (all from nba.com/stats)
Transition : 1.20 9.3% 70th
Isolation : 0.87 9.7% 58th
P&R ball handler : 0.77 1% 34th
P&R roll man : 1.1 24.5% 66th
Post up : 0.9 15.5% 57th
Spot up : 0.93 12.4% 42th
Handoff : 1.49 2.3% 99th
Cut : 1.43 6.5% 83th
Off screen : 0.89 7.2% 42th
Putbacks : 1.34 6.6% 90th
So he's great when cutting and with putbacks. Also scores well as roll man and in transition. So to sum it up, AD is at his best when he plays off ball.
Cousins :
On his 17 games with the pels :
Transition : 0.79 7.8% 8th
Isolation : 0.88 16.4% 60th
P&R ball handler : 0.85 3.1% 63th
P&R roll man : 0.89 14.9% 24th
Post up : 0.99 21.8% 80th
Spot up : 1.26 18% 95th
Cut : 1.08 3.1% 21th
Off screen :1.7 2.4% 99th
Putbacks : 1.11 6.4% 57th
Impressive how he's effective in some specific area and clearly not your typical big man. He can be both great as a spot up threat off the ball but also he show real skills to play with the ball in his hands as we can see in his number as P&R handler and in post ups.
It's really interesting because with this simple analysis we can see that AD and Boogie compliment well each other and should work at their best with the ball in Cousins's hands and AD cutting and setting screens off the ball.
It also show a big upside for the big-big PNR for the future and it needs to be worked this summer because of its upside. With more work it could be the go to move of this team in the halfcourt moving forward.
In transition since Cousins is useless while Davis is good, I think there should be strong emphasis on having Cousins as the primary defensive rebounder to throw outlet pass to AD. It should allow to create quick and easy points.
Now let's take a look at our up-coming major free agent this summer :
Holiday :
Transition : 0.91 11.5% 19th
Isolation : 1.05 7.5% 88th
P&R ball handler : 0.81 50.7% 55th
Post up : 0.67 1.3% 11th
Spot up :0.92 11.4% 41th
Handoff : 1.1 5.9% 86th
Cut : 1.46 2.2% 88th
Off screen : 0.83 2.5% 32th
First of all, I was surprised how effective Holiday were on cut and iso while being average on PNR duty. It may come from the fact that the PNR is the major part of his offense, so opponents are more prepared to defend these situation but the fact that multiple other players on the team were better on this situation play explain why Gentry tested him at the 2.
Anyway these number seems to suggest that Holiday is not the PG needed on the offensive side for this team since to take full advantage of AD skills this team need a good pick&roll ball handler.
Given his lack of success as spot up threat, his only way to be effective off the ball is to move but unfortunately frequency of plays tends to show that he does'nt move enough to create opportunities off screen or from cuts.
Now how to make this core work together ? By studying this number I would say there's basically two options : either find a great pick-and-roll handler to serve as the another ball handler or find more spot up threat to help space the PNR especially to give some space, especially to the promising big-big and also give more space for Jrue to operate while handling the ball. So why not try to combine both ?
Here are some name of player for both option : Chandler, Gallinari, Lowry, N.Young, G.Hill, P.George, Bojan Bogdanovic, Seth Curry, Spencer Dinwiddie, Gordon Hayward, Norman Powell, Austin Rivers (not a joke).
There's also the option De Colo or Teodosic from Europe.
With the secound round pick the perfect fit seems to be Josh Hart, I truly hope to see him in a pelicans uniform next year.