Monty Williams answered scores of questions Tuesday morning at his season-ending press conference, but the essence of his message about the recent past and the 2015 offseason was delivered before any queries were offered.
“We’re not done,” the five-year New Orleans Pelicans head coach said. “We have a lot to do, a lot of work to do this summer, so that we can be even better next year. The last thing I want is for us to get intoxicated off of what we’ve done, because it’s nowhere near enough. We have to continue to plod and work and explore and discover what we can be. There’s a lot of examination from the team standpoint, from an individual standpoint, from a scheme standpoint. All those things have to be addressed over the next few months.”
With a roster that entered the 2014-15 regular season tied for the NBA’s fourth-youngest (average age 24.9), perhaps the Pelicans’ biggest reason for optimism is that many of their core players are still progressing. New Orleans may not have anyone in the running for the NBA’s Most Improved Player award, but the competition for team MIP was chalk full of candidates, a big factor behind the transformation from a 34-48 record to 45-37 and a Western Conference playoff berth. Among the contenders:
- At just 22 years old, Anthony Davis made the most difficult individual leap for an NBA player, going from a very good first-time All-Star, to a top-five, elite player who is likely to be selected All-NBA first team.
- The 25-year-old Tyreke Evans enjoyed the best season of his career in a range of areas, including distributing (career-high 6.6 assists per game) and perimeter shooting (career-high 39.1 percent from 16-23 feet, after never finishing better than 33.9 percent from that distance).
- In his fourth New Orleans season – but the first healthy one for his shooting base – Eric Gordon, 26, developed into one of the league’s premier three-point marksmen. Gordon finished No. 2 in the NBA at 44.8 in three-point percentage, easily his career high in the stat.
- Quincy Pondexter, 27, shot a red-hot 43.3 percent from three-point range in 45 games with the Pelicans, a staggering improvement from his Grizzlies’ 2014-15 percentage of 23.3. Pondexter made 57 more treys with NOLA than he did with Memphis, even though he only took 98 more attempts.
- Like Gordon and Pondexter, Luke Babbitt, shot better than he ever has in the NBA. The 25-year-old southpaw would’ve led the league in three-point percentage (51.3) if he’d made enough to officially qualify for the title. Compared to his Pelicans debut in 2013-14, Babbitt made 23 more treys in 20 more attempts.
- When injuries called for him to do more, Alexis Ajinca responded. The 26-year-old center produced the two highest scoring games of his NBA career (24, 22 points) and top two rebounding performances (14, 13).
New Orleans won’t have a first-round draft pick in June, but heading into the 2015-16 season, similar jumps in in-house performance could result in the Pelicans increasing their win total for a fourth season in a row. After playing well for portions of a first-round series vs. Golden State, but ultimately falling 4-0 to the high-powered Warriors, the difficulty of advancing in the West as a No. 8 seed seems evident.
The Pelicans also would benefit greatly from improved health – a problem that has severely hampered them over the past two seasons – along with more roster stability. After the in-season additions of Pondexter, Dante Cunningham and Norris Cole were all in place, New Orleans made a range of tangible team-wide statistical improvements. Williams cited the Pelicans’ post-All-Star break rankings as No. 1 in three-point percentage and three-pointers made, along with No. 14 in defensive rating. Although 14th is still near the middle of the pack in the NBA, during the first half of the season, New Orleans ranked in the upper 20s.
“We’ve always been a team that got better as the year wore on, because basically we’ve had a different team for the past three or four years,” Williams said. “Early on (in 2014-15), it didn’t look like (we were improved defensively), and I’ll be the first to admit that. But it just takes time to figure out scheme. The other thing, early in the year, we had the toughest schedule in the league.”
The Pelicans have a handful of free agents, including one starter in Omer Asik and several other rotation players, but Williams is hopeful to foster more continuity, a rarity since he took over as coach in 2010-11. At the same time, NBA teams enter every summer knowing that some changes may be unavoidable, either by necessity due to the unpredictability of the free-agent market, or as a path to get better.
“No team, when you have that many free agents, it’s hard to stay the same,” Williams said. “That’s just a reality… Corporate equity is a huge thing, so I would love to be able to have most of our core guys back, which I feel like we will. But I’m not opposed to making the right change that is going to make our team better.
“The best thing we have going for us is we have young guys who’ve gotten better every year. I could list all of them, from AD to Alexis to Luke to Eric, even at this point in his career. All those things are important. We know that we can help guys improve in their games. At the same time, if you can improve your team with a move or a trade or a signing, I’m not opposed to that.”