Zion and Ingram on/off

[MichaelMcNamara]

The popular narrative is that Zion and BI struggle to be their full selves when they are on the court together, and to some extent it is true. BI's effective field goal percentage and true shooting percentage is higher w/o Zion that with him. His FTA's per minute go down, and he settles for more long 2's. Zion is effective either way, but his usage goes way down (33% vs 27%) and the defense is poor, as you imagine.

All that said, they still beat the opponent by a solid margin when both are on the floor, and the offense overall is amazing (almost 119 o-rating). The issue has been the lineups when those guys are staggered. The offense regresses to average, but the defense is terrible, so... a net negative to each. Now, you have replaced Adams and Bledsoe with Jonas and CJ, so there is a legit pathway to an above average offense on staggered lineups, but the difference between a net neutral and a net positive with these units will be the defense. You gotta get that defensive rating down from 117 or 118 to the 112, 113 range.

Obviously, you start with Herb here. Lineups with BI and Herb together were in the 109, 110 range. Lineups with BI but not Herb were at 116 defensive rating. I think those two are the core of the BI centric staggered lineups. With Zion, you need Nance and Trey's length and versatility. I would also want Daniels defensive rebounding and length. So, going into the season, my staggered lineups would be as follows:

Ingram-Centric

Jose
CJ
BI
Herb
Jonas

Zion-Centric

Graham
Daniels
Trey
Zion
Nance

How would you all stagger?

[MichaelMcNamara]

Also, to do this, Zion actually comes out first (Jose in), and then comes back with about 2 mins left in the first, along with the other 4. The plan would be to have the other team in the penalty by then, and now Zion is jsut going downhill this final two minutes and living at the line (or getting easy buckets).

Then, he gets another break during the change in quarters, and that unit goes hard for the first 5 to 6 minutes of the 2nd. Ingram centric unit comes in for 3 to 4 minutes, then Zion back in to replace Jose to final 2-3 minutes. Rinse and repeat in the 3rd quarter, and the 4th, though you can use timeouts to play Zion more in the 4th than you did in the 2nd. Also, you finish with Trey or Nance instead of Jonas.

That Zion centric lineup would almost always be going against backups and any lineup with Zion will be good offensively, with Trey and Daniels being able to play off Zion against backups, so they can come along without having to do too much. And if you are ever going to resurrect Graham's value, that is the situation to put him in. Can hide him on D while Daniels and Trey take the two best perimeter guys and he gets catch and shoots off Zion

[coreylaron]

Pretty solid. With this logic, do you have to accept that Kira probably isn’t getting value rehabbed? I guess this could lead to Devontae having having enough value to trade after looking good with that unit, and just plug and play Kira with the same strategy

[MichaelMcNamara]

Kira is looking fine and is mentally locked in but even if he is 100% in October (he likely won’t be), he isn’t in the rotation to start the season. Just based on performance. He will get spot minutes to begin, but the hope is that he can be better than ever by Jan or February and can be an X factor for the stretch run

[The Dud]

The popular narrative is that Zion and BI struggle to be their full selves when they are on the court together, and to some extent it is true. BI's effective field goal percentage and true shooting percentage is higher w/o Zion that with him. His FTA's per minute go down, and he settles for more long 2's. Zion is effective either way, but his usage goes way down (33% vs 27%) and the defense is poor, as you imagine.

All that said, they still beat the opponent by a solid margin when both are on the floor, and the offense overall is amazing (almost 119 o-rating). The issue has been the lineups when those guys are staggered. The offense regresses to average, but the defense is terrible, so... a net negative to each. Now, you have replaced Adams and Bledsoe with Jonas and CJ, so there is a legit pathway to an above average offense on staggered lineups, but the difference between a net neutral and a net positive with these units will be the defense. You gotta get that defensive rating down from 117 or 118 to the 112, 113 range.

Obviously, you start with Herb here. Lineups with BI and Herb together were in the 109, 110 range. Lineups with BI but not Herb were at 116 defensive rating. I think those two are the core of the BI centric staggered lineups. With Zion, you need Nance and Trey's length and versatility. I would also want Daniels defensive rebounding and length. So, going into the season, my staggered lineups would be as follows:

Ingram-Centric

Jose
CJ
BI
Herb
Jonas

Zion-Centric

Graham
Daniels
Trey
Zion
Nance

How would you all stagger?

Good stuff...bottom line, I think this should be an amazingly interesting year, especially concerning 3 players that I think are key to the future of the Pels. Trey, Daniels and (on the offensive end of the court) Herb.

I've heard it said...you don't know what you NEED...until you know exactly what you HAVE. So, I was glad to see us not make any moves until we get a better idea of exactly what we can get...outta these 3 guys. JMO

[AusPel]

More I think about it, the more I think this is a 60 win team

[MichaelMcNamara]

More I think about it, the more I think this is a 60 win team

LOL - They are setting you up. Tale as old as time. Get them hopes up!!

[MichaelMcNamara]

My expectations are somewhere in the 45-48 win range. Obviously, massive injuries could make that floor as low as 30-ish wins. I cant see more than 54. Thats if the top 4 all play 70+ games, plus improvement from some of the guys 5-10 in the rotation and a mid season trade that gives them a little boost.

To win 55+ games you need to have the defense that keeps you in games, even on those nights where you aren't hitting anything. They wont have that this year, and the offense will be far more inconsistent than I think a lot of people think

[PELICANSFAN]

My expectations are somewhere in the 45-48 win range. Obviously, massive injuries could make that floor as low as 30-ish wins. I cant see more than 54. Thats if the top 4 all play 70+ games, plus improvement from some of the guys 5-10 in the rotation and a mid season trade that gives them a little boost.

To win 55+ games you need to have the defense that keeps you in games, even on those nights where you aren't hitting anything. They wont have that this year, and the offense will be far more inconsistent than I think a lot of people think

That sounds like a fair estimate.

[new city champ]

Agree. 45-50 wins would be a good season and hopefully it gets you in top 6. Personally, I think they’ll be around a .500 team in the first half as they learn to put things together. Second half (barring injuries) they’ll be tough to beat…

[PleaseWinPels]

Maybe I'm a homer(guilty), but if we stay HEALTHY we easily win 50 games.

Going back and watching just how good Zion was with Bledsoe, Adams, and James Johnson spacing the floor has me believing he might have an MVP type year with our current team.

We took the #1 Suns to 6 games without our generational talent. Add in a top 10 pick in DD(whom I love) and my belief that DG and Trey will player better makes me think we can easily win 50.

[MichaelMcNamara]

Can win 50 games = logical statement

Can EASILY win 50 if healthy = homer statement IMO.

[Pelicanidae]

Agree. 45-50 wins would be a good season and hopefully it gets you in top 6. Personally, I think they’ll be around a .500 team in the first half as they learn to put things together. Second half (barring injuries) they’ll be tough to beat…

I have my medium expectations set around 45 wins. I things go extremely well, I could see us hitting 50 and potentially even a handful of games over that: 52, for example, isn't beyond what I think is possible in a best-case scenario. 45 is more reasonable though.

And here's how bad this team has been historically (partly from bad luck but also just being bad) - a 45 win season this year would be tied for our 2nd best record over the last 10 years. The only season we had that was better was 48 wins in 2017-18, which was the year we made that little playoff run.

If we did manage to hit 50 wins, it would be the first time the Pelicans have done so since 2007-08, and only the second time in franchise history.

So I would absolutely consider that a massive win for the franchise and for fan morale and team hype, regardless of the postseason outcomes (though of course, making a little playoff run would ice the cake).

[Pelicanidae]

That Zion centric lineup would almost always be going against backups and any lineup with Zion will be good offensively, with Trey and Daniels being able to play off Zion against backups, so they can come along without having to do too much. And if you are ever going to resurrect Graham's value, that is the situation to put him in. Can hide him on D while Daniels and Trey take the two best perimeter guys and he gets catch and shoots off Zion

Worth noting that in the last season he played, Zion + the bench was our best lineup in terms of net rating. Upgrading that bench mob to include figures like Trey who can legitimately shoot should at least on paper supercharge that. Starters have very little for Zion defensively most of the time so it's no surprise he can just mow down backups, and bench groups usually don't have the offensive power to truly punish some of the defensive issues those Zion+bench units had. At least, not as much as a starter unit could, for obvious reasons.

So I think the idea of having Zion come out slightly earlier and then coming back in to play with the bench mob again has a lot of value, at least to start the year. Make adjustments based on if it works or not, but I don't really see why it wouldn't.

[Pelicansfun]

I don’t think Willie will start the season with Dyson playing so the staggered lineups to me look like:

Jose
Herb
BI
Nance
Jonas

And then
CJ
Graham
Murphy
Zion
Jaxson

[AusPel]

LOL - They are setting you up. Tale as old as time. Get them hopes up!!

Haha I was drunk to say 60 wins. I think 50 is attainable though.

Barring injury, which is a big clause

40 wins should be the absolute floor

[luckyman]

Fully healthy this is a 50 win team at minimum. That's not a homer take. It's a clean, non 2021 cut & paste confirmation bias take. The offensive firepower should overcome the expected defensive issues.

I also think they will be on egg shells around Zion and try to protect his minutes for much of the season. Meaning I doubt they'll ever have him out there with 4 bench players especially when it's not necessary.

The starting 5 is stacked enough to have at least 2 of BI, CJ, or Zion on the floor for pretty much all available minutes. Especially the inside/out dynamic of Zion/CJ. If it happens to be just one of them, it'll likely be BI or CJ at least for the 1st half of the year.

But as is customary, I expect one of those 3 to be out at least 30 games this year. So it's moot.

[Pelicanidae]

Fully healthy this is a 50 win team at minimum. That's not a homer take. It's a clean, non 2021 cut & paste confirmation bias take. The offensive firepower should overcome the expected defensive issues.

I just don't know how you're so confident about that. Yes, obviously, this team has a huge amount of offensive potential, but 50 wins minimum is intense. We won 36 games last year. A 14 win single-season improvement certainly isn't unheard of, and much larger improvements have happened, but it's also not insignificant. And most of the teams who have bigger improvements tend to be bottom of the barrel teams (89 Spurs, for example), not 'quite good' teams already.

Yeah, assuming everyone plays every game and nobody gets any injuries, 50 wins is fairly realistic I think. But injury isn't the only thing that can cause losses and I wouldn't want to assume that there's no way we could win fewer than 50 games without injuries being to blame. It's possible that other stuff just goes wrong.

[fullcourtpress]

Kira is looking fine and is mentally locked in but even if he is 100% in October (he likely won?t be), he isn?t in the rotation to start the season. Just based on performance. He will get spot minutes to begin, but the hope is that he can be better than ever by Jan or February and can be an X factor for the stretch run

hurt or not; Kira has elite speed with the ball. He has a great looking shot. hustle and length

but he's not that good at playing basketball and has no clue how he should finish when he blows by his man

probably a bust

[MichaelMcNamara]

I bet Kira figures it out. But like most, it won’t be with the team who drafted him. I would actually be kind of surprised if he isn’t a solid 7th man or better in his prime. He started off pretty bad in college too but once he figured it out, he was exceptional. I wouldn’t be surprised if he has a Reggie Jackson like mid 20s

[PELICANSFAN]

I bet Kira figures it out. But like most, it won’t be with the team who drafted him. I would actually be kind of surprised if he isn’t a solid 7th man or better in his prime. He started off pretty bad in college too but once he figured it out, he was exceptional. I wouldn’t be surprised if he has a Reggie Jackson like mid 20s

I see him as a Darren Collison type of player. Reliable bench player once he figures it out.

[AusPel]

hurt or not; Kira has elite speed with the ball. He has a great looking shot. hustle and length

but he's not that good at playing basketball and has no clue how he should finish when he blows by his man

probably a bust

I concur with this assessment completely

[MichaelMcNamara]

Which Collison? Because there was a version of Collison that was more than that.

I don’t think he hits Collison’s peak but he can hit his middle IMO. The whole key for him will be learning to play at different speeds. Some guys learn that, some never do. Could be crazy to say, but this injury might be good to him if during the rehab he doesn’t have the burst and therefore can’t rely on that/has to learn more crafty ways to succeed

[fullcourtpress]

what's funny is none of us can really critique the way he finishes..... cause he sooo doesn't

[Upper Decker]

Can win 50 games = logical statement

Can EASILY win 50 if healthy = homer statement IMO.

And what would the win total be for a pessimist who denies that he's a pessimist and wrongly believes he is a realist?