New Orleans Pelicans Executive Vice President of Basketball Operations David Griffin offered his post-mortem on the team’s 2020-21 season on Monday and addressed a number of topics about both the past six months and the work ahead for the franchise.
Griffin identified three key issues the team must address: Basketball IQ, toughness and shooting.
“Those three things really revealed themselves,” Griffin said, adding that there were 14 games in which the Pelicans held double-digit leads but didn’t seal the deal with wins.
“We don’t have the winning mettle yet,” Griffin said. “We know this is a process, and it takes time. But we also look at whether what we’re doing is working.”
“The level of accountability we’re going to hold everyone to is all about winning,” Griffin said.
Griffin did reason that the abbreviated nature of the NBA year left little room for some of the necessary activities that stimulate a young player’s maturation, saying they were forced to condense what is normally 20 weeks’ worth of work into just two weeks last offseason, and that they lack of practice time meant the lack of five-on-five workouts that can be crucial in figuring out which rotations work best on the floor at game speed.
Griffin also gave the team’s coach Stan Van Gundy some credit for having the courage to think outside the box.
“We interviewed nine coaches,” Griffin said. “Stan was the only one who saw the ‘Point Zion’ vision.”
Griffin said going forward, Zion Williamson’s unique skillset will be utilized even more as an unconventional point guard.
He also stated that, until the final rash of injuries took down most of the Pelicans’ key players in the final weeks, the team fully expected to be in the postseason, and that the belief is that they won’t fall short again.
“Our team knows we’re close,” Griffin said. “I think you’ll see everyone has a great deal of confidence.”