David Griffin says Pelicans will show urgency to improve this offseason

Rarely do NBA teams retain a similar roster even in back-to-back seasons, but the New Orleans Pelicans have been an outlier, relying on nearly the exact same primary cast over each of the past three campaigns. The result has been a steady progression in the Western Conference standings, going from 36 to 42 to 49 victories since Willie Green took over as head coach in 2021-22.

While Crescent City basketball fans have become exceptionally familiar with the nine or 10 faces in Green’s nightly rotation, it’s possible that could change a bit this summer. Pelicans Executive Vice President of Basketball Operations David Griffin said during Tuesday’s exit interviews that the franchise needed to get a deeper assessment of what the roster was capable of amid a longer stretch of health before moving forward. Improved availability of key players allowed the front office to make more significant evaluations – Zion Williamson, Brandon Ingram and CJ McCollum logged 737 minutes together, for example – compared to previous seasons.

“I think in the past we’ve always erred on the side of continuity,” Griffin said, “and our takeaway has always been ‘Let’s see this group healthy.’ (Now) I think we’ve seen this group enough. We had a really good opportunity to see Zion play a career high in games (with 70). We saw it for segments of time well enough to understand that we’ve got a lot of work to do.”

Griffin cited the challenge of competing in the tough Western Conference, which increases the demands on what it will take to be successful. For instance, the Pelicans’ 49-33 record would’ve been good enough for a No. 3 seed in the East, but in the West, they had to beat Sacramento in a play-in elimination game just to qualify for the playoffs as a No. 8 seed.

“Because it is a historically good Western Conference, there are teams that didn’t make the playoffs that are going to get radically better this offseason,” Griffin said, alluding to squads like Sacramento and Golden State finishing 10 games over .500. “We need to do the same. I think you’ll see a real sense of urgency from all of us to do that.”

Looking back at the regular season, New Orleans finished tied for the second-most wins in franchise history. However, that was followed by a 4-0 sweep to Oklahoma City that sent the Pelicans into the offseason on a sour note. Griffin noted the two divergent ways to examine the just-completed season.

“I think the 49 wins are something that would’ve led you to believe we’d be playing deep into the (playoffs) at times,” Griffin said. “For very large chunks of the season, we had the second-best net rating in the league and if not for Boston, we would’ve looked like the best team in the league. I also think we had stretches where you could see we had a lot of room for growth and improvement we needed to make.

“Unfortunately we continued to have injury issues, and certainly had a big one at the wrong time (Williamson’s left hamstring strain, causing him to sit out the playoffs). But there are so many positives we take out of the season. It’s really unfortunate the season ended in the way it did. You’d like the season to crescendo into a moment that lets everybody know how good your season really was. We had the No. 1 road record in the NBA. We were sixth in defensive rating, sixth in net rating. We had moments where we really showed what we could be, but we did it often in fits and starts, which is disappointing.”

Part of the Pelicans’ recent roster continuity has stemmed from savvy drafting of contributors such as Trey Murphy and Herb Jones with the No. 17 and No. 35 overall picks, respectively, in 2022. Those kinds of players should put New Orleans in better position to be successful long term, but Griffin indicated that the time is now for the Pelicans to make another jump in the West.

“Our foundation and our nucleus is really good,” Griffin said. “You come out of a (playoff) series where a really, really good (Oklahoma City) team sort of waylays you, and makes you think you won nine games, and not 49 games. The reality is we won 49 games and did a lot of good things.

“We’ll take a lot of time to go through (evaluations) as a group… but I want to be really, really clear: This is not going to be a summer of complacency. It’s time to get better.”