As David Griffin looked around the New Orleans Pelicans training facility Tuesday morning, he noted that things would look significantly different in there by the start of next season.
That same fact would likely be true for the team and roster itself, following an encouraging 49-win season that fell flat with injuries and a playoff sweep against the top-seeded Thunder.
"This will be a good time for us to really dive deep with the whole group," said the team's Executive Vice President. "But I want to be really, really clear, this is not going to be a summer of complacency. It’s time to get better.”
If that comes to fruition, it's a marked shift in strategy. A year ago after the Pelicans fell to the Thunder in the play-in tournament to end the season, they opted to largely run it back. There were a few tweaks, most notably the addition of rookie Jordan Hawkins, but otherwise consistency was the play.
That was because they didn't feel they'd seen enough from their stars, at least not playing at the same time. Brandon Ingram missed 37 games while Zion missed 53 and the play-in game. The team did face the absences of Ingram late in the season and Zion for the entirety of their playoff series due to injury, but that won't stop them again, Griffin said. They'd seen what they needed to see, and while they weren't down on the year in any respect, there was a frustrating lack of success when the big three of Ingram, Williamson and CJ McCollum were on the floor together.
Still, Griffin used the term "ancillary pieces" as the goal of what needs to be added, a soft tease that a breakup of the core of the roster remains unlikely.
"I don’t think [the need is] more star quality, necessarily," Griffin said. "I think it’s more fit and the right pieces."
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Of the stars in hand, the one with the biggest looming question is Ingram as he enters the final year of his deal and is eligible for a maximum extension. Griffin said the subject hasn't been broached with the player or his agent, but that he had heard the star forward's comments about the struggles of this season.
"I think his willingness to take ownership of things makes you feel even better about the human he is, and that’s the one thing I’m really proud of," Griffin said. "I think we’ve gotten the people part of this right to an enormous degree throughout this roster and I expect that’ll carry us through the summer as well.”
One change that Griffin appeared to rule out was at head coach, though he didn't say that explicitly. He did, however, laud Willie Green's handling of the difficult circumstances that came his team's way down the stretch of the season, and the steady increase from 36 to 42 to 49 wins in each of his three seasons.
"I think throughout that, Willie stayed very, very authentically himself and stayed in a space where guys knew what he was gonna bring to the table every day," Griffin said. "I think that’s hard when you’ve got that much change, and at the same time I think Willie would be the first person to tell you there’s rooom for them to grow and get better as well, and I expect that will happen as well.”
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MORE FROM DAVID GRIFFIN
Does this team need a 'pure' point guard
“I think having a pure point guard is great, just having more basketball IQ on the court in general. I think it’s less about the specific of a pure point guard and overall basketball intelligence and approach to the game. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is a score-first point guard. I don’t know that I’d call him a “pure point guard,” but they’re getting the first, most efficient look on a regular basis with the way they’re running their stuff. So it can be predicated on one individual or it can be predicated on system and I think we’ve done a little bit of both throughout our time and yes, I would like more basketball IQ for sure.”
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Thoughts on Zion's season
“Obviously getting him to play a career-high number of games was exciting for us, and when I say getting him to, him doing the work to get to that point was exciting. He did a remarkable job this year. I think coming out of the in-season tournament, he had seen a lot of what he needed to do better and he really bought into that. I think the connection he had with our performance team was pretty profound in a positive way. I think we saw a lot of really good things on the court. I think probably for me, the most disheartening part of his injury was you saw him take and make pull-up jumpshots towards the end of his run there, and that was something that coaches have been encouraging him to do, and he was reluctant to do because he always feels like the best option is to try to shoot at the rim, and I think you saw so much evolution in his game that came from the evolution in his body and the work he put in, so we’re really excited about where Zion is and where he intends to go.”
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Does this team need more 'difference-makers'?
“I’d take seven or eight more difference-makers. No, I mean, I don’t know that it’s difference-makers as much as it is pieces that make the difference-makers we already have sit better. I mean, we’ve got the kind of players that everybody wants on really good teams. I think one thing you did see was that our secondary players, our ancillary pieces are very, very good and very well thought of. There’s going to be a lot of room for growth for them. There was a period of time this year where Jordan Hawkins was, I think, second in rookie of the year balloting and people thought we had absolutely stolen something. He’s somebody we’re really excited about moving forward. He’s going to be one of those difference-makers eventually, we think. I think we have a lot of pieces that are that. A couple years ago we would’ve said the same thing about Trey or Herb. So we have several pieces we can grow with. We have several draft assets that we’re going to be able to use, to leverage, to get better. And I think, to your point, yes, you need more difference-makers, but what you need is more people who understand exactly what is being asked of them on a regular basis as well. We’ve got to do a better job of making that true.”