Issues are going from dangerous to worse for the New Orleans Pelicans, whose poor begin has reminded followers of their terrible offseason strikes. They made arguably the worst offseason transfer of the summer season by buying and selling the twenty third choose and an unprotected choose within the 2026 NBA Draft to the Atlanta Hawks for the thirteenth choose and the draft rights to Derek Queen.
Queen has appeared nice up to now, however the Pelicans have the worst document within the NBA, and that in all probability is not going to get a lot better. Which means it is completely attainable that they traded a top-5 choose in what’s shaping as much as be an outlandishly good 2026 NBA Draft.
AJ Dybantsa, Darryn Peterson, and Cam Boozer all have the expertise to be 5-time all-stars. And it isn’t just like the Pelicans did not know they might be dangerous sufficient to probably have a excessive lottery choose.
Worse nonetheless, they traded the Indiana Pacers again their 2026 first-round choose in trade for his or her choose within the 2025 NBA draft, which was the choice they traded for Queen.
Hindsight is 20/20, and the Pelicans had no method of figuring out that simply days after making that Pacers commerce, star Tyrese Haliburton would tear his Achilles in Recreation 7 of the NBA Finals.
The one workforce that has had worse luck than the Pacers in the previous couple of months is the Pelicans. They may have held onto that choose, their very own choose, and been sitting fairly with two potential top-10 picks in subsequent yr’s NBA Draft.
Three winless NBA groups this morning: Nets, Pacers, and Pelicans.
New Orleans owned each its personal and Indiana’s 2026 firsts, then new GM Joe Dumars traded each in June. And now each picks are have high 3 odds in a loaded draft.
Gulp! pic.twitter.com/QtfA9MY2Nu
— Kevin O’Connor (@KevinOConnor) October 30, 2025
Joe Dumars has the New Orleans Pelicans in free fall
All of those failed strikes lie on the ft of just lately employed GM Joe Dumars. Dumars beforehand ran the Detroit Pistons into the bottom after initially being a incredible GM. Sadly for Pelicans followers, he seems to be doing it once more already.
There was his baffling choice to amass Jordan Poole regardless that he’s making greater than $30 million a season for the subsequent 3 years. In the meantime, in addition they have Dejounte Murray, who’s making related cash over the subsequent two and is at the moment injured.
These two gamers clearly aren’t part of their long-term plans, and even Zion Williamson might not be, resulting in questions on what their plan is strictly. Does Dumars also have a plan? The very best anybody can inform is that he’s hoping to strike gold with Queen and Jermaiah Fears, however he could have mortgaged their future to take action.
