New Orleans has agreed on deal with Brooklyn assistant general manager Trajan Langdon to make him the new GM working alongside David Griffin, league sources tell @TheAthleticNBA @Stadium.
— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) May 19, 2019
Printable View
New Orleans has agreed on deal with Brooklyn assistant general manager Trajan Langdon to make him the new GM working alongside David Griffin, league sources tell @TheAthleticNBA @Stadium.
— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) May 19, 2019
Couldn't be better. I was hoping we sign him or Griffin as GM but having both is even better.
Great hire , things are looking up way up . AD [emoji102]
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalkhttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...0041fe8501.jpg
https://www.thebirdwrites.com/2019/3...rry-dell-demps
YES!!!
Amen!
Someone forward it to Cowherd& No neck
Oh it's going down tonight!!!
I’m not familiar with him for his front office work but I know a lot of people here are high on him. Can someone enlighten me as to why he is such a great hire when we already have griffin. I’m not upset just wanna know the positives
Calling Bill Simmons !!!!!!!!!!! Hello Hellooo Helllooooooooo !
It’s crazy out of all the candidates I wanted Griffin then my second choice was Langdon but figured we would just be status quo and keep Ferry , never in my wildest dreams would I have thought we would get both plus Aron Nelson plus the number one over all pick . A month ago this organization was in shambles now where having the best off season in the history of this franchise . Excited for the future with or without Davis !!
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
This is getting better and better - great news. David You are the Man! Don't stop working.
This has got to be one of the best offseasons in the history of the NBA. The signings of Griffin, Nelson and now Langdon on top of securing the #1 overall pick is better than I could have hoped for. Langdon is an up and comer who was on everyone's list to interview for their front office. He's been a player, a scout, an assistant GM and (along with Mista) was my top choice after Griffin. To get the established, well-respected Griffin to oversee things and a really intelligent guy like Langdon to be the GM is ideal IMO. A bonus could be that he must have some good European contacts from the time he spent playing over there in Italy, Turkey and Russia. I am seriously pumped for this team's future. And right now ain't too bad either. :cool:
I didn't realize it, but Langdon worked with Griffin during the 2015/2016 season in Cleveland. So they already have an idea of how well they will work together. I'm loving it.
David Griffin & The Lady in Black & Gold have done more this franchise in 36 days than Tom Benson & Dell Demps did in 7 yrs !
Holy... Crap. This has been an amazing offseason.
Got the best trainer in the league
Cleaned out the FO
Got a real scouting department
Got a real Basketball Operation guy in Griffen
Won the lotto
About to get a kings ransom for AD.
Got a a great GM from a squad that had like tree fiddy and Ja Rule tickets and flip it to be a playoff team.
AD better no be all about staying now.
Great addition. I liked him when he played at Duke. The Alaskan Assassin could shoot that ball with a pretty stroke.
This organization has been completely transformed in the matter of months. David Griffin is the best front office signing this organization has ever made. If we trade AD, I can only imagine his luck with the draft picks we acquire. Then we bring in the best trainer in the league from Phoenix. We hit the lottery with the most hyped player since LeBron James. I don’t think AD had this much hype around him. And now we got the GM I wanted the most, a really sharp basketball guy. Now if only we could get a new coach. I never been a fan of Gentry, but people around the league sure like him.
It’s an exciting time to be a Pelican fan for sure. We either have our big 3 if AD decides to stay or we get a boat load of young players & picks to build a deep & talented team to grow together into a contender.
Now Trajan send AD to the Knicks for Dennis Smith Jr, Kevin Knox, Mitchell Robinson, 2019 1st(RJ or Ja), 2020 1st, 2021 1st, Dallas’ 2021 1st, and Dallas’ 2023 1st. 3 players and 5 picks, unless they will also throw in Trier with all those picks. Man that would be sick to have 3 straight drafts of multiple 1st round picks with 2021 having 3!! Not sure we will be able to get 5 picks, but hopefully at least 4. Hopefully we get the 2019, 2020, 2021 Dallas, and either the 2021 or 2023 Dallas.
Pretty awesome hire. I remember going to a Sonics vs Cavaliers game years ago with my dad in Seattle. We were looking through the game program and saw Langdon was from Anchorage. Being from Alaska, we were both stoked to see an NBA player from there.
I know his name has been thrown around quite a bit this off-season. Sounds like he was very high on more than a few lists for the GM position. I don't want to get my hopes up too much, though. I remember being all kinds of excited when Dell was hired and I couldn't have been more wrong.
These signings further the notion for me that Gayle is ininitely more engaged with the Pelicans than Tom was. I hope these signings all work out and we turn this franchise around.
Can you imagine if the 3 R’s were running the Pelicans
This was the move I was waiting for. I think we all knew, when Griff got given a new title rather than just GM, that a GM was probably incoming. That was made abundantly clear when he said that he was bringing in the right people and would be happy to give them the GM title if it was what was needed. It was then made concrete when he made the run at Trent Redden.
I was beyond hiring Langdon from the beginning, as I thought his experience rebuilding with an asset-strapped Nets team would help us a lot (I didn't imagine us getting the first pick haha) and that his youth and international experience would help pay off in the form of a dynamic outlook on the franchise and international scouting. To get him AND Griff is huge.
Pels are having the best offseason, not just this summer, but that I can remember any team having for a while.
I haven't been this excited about the franchise since we won the AD lottery. Griff and Gayle are handling things perfectly so far and it looks like we're well on our way to being a top notch organization. This is the hire that I wanted from the beginning and I cannot wait to see what this completely revamped front office is gonna do.
Why do people want walking injury reports like Bol Bol or Tacko Fall so much? I know we got Aaron nelson now, but I just can’t trust people that irregularly tall to have very long careers.
Just gonna leave this stuff here in case anyone missed it, or isn't very active on twitter.
More:
— Shamit Dua (@FearTheBrown) May 19, 2019
- Langdon was head of scouting. Responsible for organizing college, league and international scouts.
- His background as a player allows him to give insight into decisions such as if the 12-15th man needs to be young players or Vets. He knows what a locker needs.
So the Pelicans hires two Griffins and will now draft a guy who can fly and is a little thick.
— Ryan Schwan (@SchwanBSS) May 19, 2019
Does that mean Zions nickname should be the “Hippogriff”?
Since inheriting the Pels, Gayle:
— Mason Ginsberg (@MasonGinsberg) May 17, 2019
- Resisted all Lakers advances for AD, expediting their downward spiral
- Fixed the org structure
- Hired David Griffin, arguably the biggest "name" available, to run the team
- Added Aaron Nelson & threw out $1M to upgrade the team's facilities
+ Trajan Langdon
Itwas abundantly clear. He don't mind being a career loser aslong as he got his stats and in place he likes.. It was never about culture or any of that...
AD changed his looks, got his teeth fix, and doing everything he can to make himself more marketable and build his brand up. You can only build a brand up sooo much in New Orleans unfortunately. He's probably trying to open business, fashion line, and assortment of other business ventures. As AD has put it, "(The Trade demand) Is what is best for me and time to move on."
I don't believe that. Lebron James built a world-wide brand in Cleveland, Ohio. Giannis is the face of the league right now from Milwaukee. The problem is that if you want to build a brand up in a smaller market, you need to have some personality. AD doesn't. He seems like he'd be a nice enough guy to hang out with, but I've been following this team his entire career and I couldn't say much about him outside of that. Nothing wrong wiht being a neutral personality, but it does make it difficult to break out on the highest scale of marketing.
Zion is going to come to New Orleans and have a bigger brand than AD did within a year.
AD isn't Lebron. AD was never a box office hit. Lebron and Zion are... Zion brings the market with him. AD struggle trying anything going in his first 4 years in the league and he probably blamed the market. He wasn't getting those shoe deals or spirte commercials. AD never had that larger than life personality to draw people in...
Ok Griffin is slowly winning me over.
That's exactly what I was saying. AD never had the personality. That's got nothing to do with New Orleans.
Top tier personalities create the market. Like you said, Zion brings the market with him. Lebron created the market in Cleveland. Russell Westbrook somehow finds the market despite playing in Oklahoma City. It's not that ''you can only build a brand up so much in New Orleans'', it's that Anthony Davis can only build a brand up so much in New Orleans, and that's his problem, not the city's.
Yeah his game isn't really flashy either. Curry shooting is sexy, Irving handles are other worldly, and Williamson bounce is godly. AD is just efficient. Few flash plays here and there but not enough to over shadow just being bland personality wise. And even then he gets pretty good endorsements.
AD has shown signs of the personality needed to really break out from a small market. There's a reason that that dunk over Nurkic in the playoffs last year, followed up with AD roaring from behind the pointing-Jrue became an instant-meme. Cause it was that wow moment. It had personality. It told the fans something, and it was a media image.
He just doesn't do it much. Which again, I want to be clear, is fine. It's perfectly valid to have a kind of neutral, boring personality. But it does, like I think we all agree, make it harder to get big fat endorsements and a world-wide brand from a small market.
We killed it this offseason! Really not a single thing that could have gone better!
AD also doesn't take over games. He is consistent from tipoff to the final whi.....actually he kinda disappears at the end. Bricks some 3s. Everyone else mentioned as having made a brand for themselves can take over games and will their teams to win. Everything else you guys said, too. Spot on.
And yes. What an amazing offseason.
I'm sorry, I just don't believe that.
AD can't take over the game in the same way other players can, because the league is tailor made for guards and shooters these days and AD is neither. But I've watched too many games where AD basically won it for us in the final few minutes, with clutch rebounds (offensive and defensive), clutch put-backs, and clutch blocks to pretend that he's some chronic disappearer. This isn't James Harden, here.
Guys this is how dynasties are built
Also worth noting Chris Finch did NOT get hired away from us.
So we will not be losing the best big man offensive system developer in the league when we could use him more than ever.
Only because he's been here so long.
AD is consistently noted as one of the best players in the league. Before this past season, I would have argued the best, but after the emergence of the Greek Freak I'd still say top 3.
But make a list of people you want taking over your team down by 1 with ten seconds left in the game and AD is not top 3. Maybe top 25......maybe.....he lost us just as many game chunking up ill advised 3s as he won. The most thrilling AD moment was when he hit that GW against OKC back when his career was just starting.
That's marketing. People want the game winners. He is not a game winner.