How will Pelicans address an expensive, underperforming roster as new CBA looms?

Publish date: 2024-05-14

Could John Collins go down as the inverse version of Timofey Mozgov?

It was Mozgov’s four-year, $64 million contract with the Lakers in 2016 that signified the vast changes in the NBA landscape at the time, with a new collective bargaining agreement on the horizon and teams flush with cash after a new television deal kicked in. A few franchises were altered for years after handing out massive contracts to players like Mozgov who just happened to be free agents that year.

On Monday, Atlanta agreed to trade the 25-year-old Collins to the Jazz for Rudy Gay and a future second-round pick. After years of hoping Collins could yield at least a first-round pick on the open market, the Hawks settled for a shockingly low return for a flawed, but young and talented enough player to contribute on a good team.

This is the new world NBA teams have to operate in with this new CBA, which goes into effect on July 1 and punishes high-spending teams. Had they kept the $78 million remaining on Collins’ contract over the next three seasons, the Hawks would’ve sailed beyond the dreaded “second apron,” a threshold currently $17.5 million over the luxury tax that comes with additional team-building restrictions in addition to exponential financial costs. Most of the NBA will do all they can to avoid that line.

With the trade, the Hawks became the first team to make a blatant cost-cutting move this summer. They won’t be the last.

The New Orleans Pelicans are hoping to avoid a similar fate — at all costs.

New Orleans won’t have to show that level of desperation this summer with its current roster, but tough decisions are coming in the near future. The Pels have assembled a ton of young talent, but those young players eventually have to get paid. With the new rules about to be implemented, it’s about to become harder than ever to keep a young roster like this together. There’s a chance the Pelicans will eventually be forced to make a trade similar to the Collins deal just to maintain any semblance of roster-building flexibility — even if ownership approves of paying the luxury tax for the first time in franchise history.

These will be especially tough decisions for the Pelicans’ front office considering how much injuries to Zion Williamson and others have limited this group’s time together on the floor. Regardless, they must begin acting this offseason to prepare for the conundrum that awaits the team in the future.

Let’s take a look at some of those roster decisions.

The current state of the roster

New Orleans has four immediate items to check off on Thursday. First, they must decide if they want to pick up team options on Willy Hernangomez ($2.6 million), Herb Jones ($1.8 million) and Naji Marshall ($1.9 million). My guess is Marshall stays via his team option and Hernangomez, who has been open about wanting to play for a team that gives him a more consistent role, will hit unrestricted free agency. Of course, Jones will also be back, but his situation is a little more complicated, as we’ll explain later.

New Orleans also must decide by Thursday whether to tender Jaxson Hayes a $7.7 million qualifying offer, which would make him a restricted free agent. If they decline, Hayes will become an unrestricted free agent. All signs point to the Pels doing the latter, allowing Hayes to hit the open market.

If Hayes and Hernangomez are gone, and Jones and Marshall stay, the Pelicans will have 13 players on their roster going into free agency.

That number can easily drop to 12 once a decision is made on Garrett Temple, whose $5.4 million contract for 2023-24 has yet to be guaranteed. ESPN reported that the Pels and Temple agreed to extend the deadline for guaranteeing his salary to July 7. Pushing back that trigger date gives New Orleans the flexibility to include him in a bigger trade if they can pull one off in time. Other teams have tried this, and it usually leads to the player getting waived anyway. If Temple isn’t traded by July 7, I expect the same to happen to him. The Pels need all the room they can get under the luxury tax threshold.

Removing Temple would put the Pels at 12 players making around $154 million in guaranteed salary, leaving them dangerously close to the $165 million luxury tax line with three roster spots to fill.

In other words: the Pelicans’ financial crunch is already tight this year, and that’s before new deals for young players like Jones, Marshall, Trey Murphy and/or Jose Alvarado are added in the future. This may be the Pelicans’ final opportunity to have a roster with this kind of depth, and that’s if they decide to run it back with the core from last year’s squad and no other significant changes.

Things will get complicated for this team at some point. It’s just a matter of time. But there is one major domino that has to fall first:

A Herb Jones extension?

Locking Jones down on a long-term contract seems like a no-brainer for most Pelicans fans. The former second-round pick is extension-eligible this summer after playing a massive role in his first two seasons with the team. He’s one of the top defensive weapons in the West and a highly-regarded figure in the locker room.

While admittedly leaving out some of the more complicated details of the Pelicans’ dilemma, let’s just say they have two options when it comes to Jones’ next deal. They can either pick up his team option and sign him to an extension this summer, or they can pick up his option and allow Jones to hit restricted free agency in the summer of 2024.

With some of the new CBA rules kicking in, Jones is eligible to sign an extension of up to four years and a projected $73 million. That figure would be based on the 2024-25 salary cap level and kick in starting with that season.

Agreeing to an extension with Jones this summer would be a win for both sides. Jones would get his long-term security, and the Pels would lock down one of the best perimeter defenders in the league at a relatively reasonable price. As a point of comparison, Dorian Finney-Smith signed a four-year, $52 million extension with Dallas in February 2022. Getting Jones on a deal somewhere in that neighborhood would be a win for New Orleans.

The Pels could also allow Jones to hit restricted free agency next summer, which would give them the freedom to match any offer Jones gets from another team. This could be a way for them to bargain against the field and hope Jones’ market isn’t as robust as expected.

Considering all options, though, that’s probably a risk not worth taking, especially if there’s a chance of hard feelings brewing over the decision. Usually, when teams love a guy the way the Pels love Jones, their front offices lean toward getting a deal done to maintain the positive vibes in the building. My bet is Jones and New Orleans will strike a deal relatively soon that shows their commitment to keeping him around.

Jones making around $16 million in the first year of his next deal would be seen by some as a bargain and others as a hefty price for a player with some obvious offensive limitations. Either way, though, having him on a deal that pricey only complicates New Orleans’ cap management challenges going into the summer of 2024.

Max money without max availability

While they’ve only played 10 games together, there’s no questioning how dangerous the trio of Zion Williamson, Brandon Ingram and C.J. McCollum can be when all of them are healthy. It’s easy to forget how scary they looked on opening night last season when New Orleans trucked the pre-Kevin Durant trade Brooklyn Nets at Barclays Center.

If the Pelicans can keep all three of these guys on the court, the Pels can be a real contender in the West. Of course, that’s been a major challenge the last two seasons, and with Williamson throughout his NBA career.

Beyond that, though, keeping all three on the salary cap sheet may prove to be an even bigger challenge for the Pelicans heading into the future. The five-year, $197 million contract Williamson signed last summer begins this season. McCollum is locked in through the 2025-26 season after signing a two-year, $64 million extension last fall. Ingram has two years and $70 million left on his current contract and becomes eligible for an extension on July 14, though he’s unlikely to sign it to preserve his eligibility for a supermax by making an All-NBA team. This new CBA has made it difficult for any team to keep three players making at least $30 million on the roster, whether they are regularly healthy or not.

That task becomes even more daunting for a franchise that’s historically avoided the luxury tax. The messaging from Pelicans’ ownership has consistently been that it is willing to cross that threshold if the team proves to be a true – read: healthy – contender on the court. There’s some skepticism about whether that actually happens if and when the bill comes due. But the front office must first do its part to build a contender, something the Pelicans have yet to be.

Having Williamson, Ingram and McCollum is a great start for any team hoping to win big in a murky Western Conference field. Still, this trio is quite expensive, especially considering its lack of success as a unit.

If three players on your roster are making north of $100 million, you’re doing one of two things in today’s NBA: competing for titles or looking for other teams to eat some of your salary. If all goes well, the Pels can do the former, but that has yet to happen. Obviously, keeping Zion and Ingram for the long haul is the Pelicans’ preference, but the persistent trade rumors involving each this offseason proves the front office isn’t scared of searching out different ways to strike gold. A world where any of these three names become available next summer can’t be out of the question.

Things will be much easier for the front office if ownership comes through on its promise and pays the luxury tax to keep the core in place. But that is no guarantee, and thriving in this environment with three players making as much as Williamson, Ingram and McCollum will be really difficult for any team.

What to do at center?

One area where the Pels can start bracing for this potentially scary future is to make some moves with the bigs this offseason. As noted earlier, there’s a real chance both Hernangomez and Hayes will be gone this summer, which leaves Jonas Valančiūnas and Larry Nance Jr. as the only center options on the roster. Pelicans EVP of basketball operations David Griffin admitted last week that rim protection is one of the areas he hopes to address this offseason. As good as Valančiūnas and Nance are, neither add much from that standpoint.

Valančiūnas is set to make $15.4 million this season in the final year of his contract. Expiring deals like that can be extremely valuable trade chips in this new world, where cost-cutting will become so prevalent, but that will require taking on more salary for the future. The Pels could also keep Valančiūnas around for another season and remove that $15.4 million figure next summer to provide some cap relief, but considering the lack of minutes we’ve seen from Williamson at the center position to this point in his career, it’s still important to invest in a center that can play next to him.

If Valančiūnas isn’t the right kind of center, what can New Orleans do? Jake Fischer of Yahoo! Sports suggested this week that the Pels showed some interest in a potential trade with Cleveland for Jarrett Allen. With Cleveland also facing some tough decisions in the future as they re-sign some of their young talent to long-term deals, a trade of Valančiūnas, Temple and draft compensation could make sense for both teams.

As much as Allen seems like a more natural fit next to Williamson, though, his contract figures any move with New Orleans complicated. Allen is set to make exactly $20 million in each of the next three seasons. Having someone locked into a contract for that long used to be an asset. Now, it seems burdensome, especially with potential extensions for Jones, Murphy and possibly Alvarado to worry about in the future.

The combined salaries of Valančiūnas and Temple would also be enough to go after someone like Atlanta’s Clint Capela, who only has one season and $22.3 million left on his current contract. But the fit for both teams is weird, considering Atlanta’s roster isn’t built to accommodate a post-up big man like Valančiūnas and New Orleans’ isn’t designed to maximize a pick-and-roll dive man like Capela who eats off lobs and putbacks.

Washington’s Daniel Gafford is another trade option, as he possesses a longer deal at a lower average salary than Allen’s $20 million per season. Going from Valančiūnas to Gafford would also be a downgrade for New Orleans.

It probably makes more sense to keep Valančiūnas and brace for any questions in the future with additional flexibility. Having Valančiūnas and Nance making a combined $25 million doesn’t seem feasible moving forward, considering the other restrictions that will hamstring the Pels. But it may be their best option for this season.

That shot-blocking Griffin mentioned may need to come from a bit of bargain-basement shopping.

Potential minimum targets

While we’re on that topic, here are a few names for veteran’s minimum salaries that I’d keep an eye out for if I were running the Pelicans: Thomas Bryant, Mike Muscala (team option with Boston), DeAndre Jordan, JaMychal Green and … Jaxson Hayes.

I’d also throw 2022 second-round pick EJ Liddell out there as an option to eat up some minutes at center if things go well with him this season. The Pels could move him from a two-way contract to a regular roster spot if he plays well enough after recovering from a torn ACL last summer.

To review: the 2024-25 outlook might be bleak

Williamson, Ingram and McCollum are scheduled to make a combined $106.1 million in 2024-25. Throw in an extension with Jones that starts at $15 million (which is generous), and the Pels would be spending $121 million on just four players. It will be exceedingly difficult to keep this team under the tax – which is projected to be somewhere in the $175-180 million range – and field a competitive group.

So, either the organization needs to start warming up to the idea of paying the luxury tax to keep this core together, or it’s time to start wondering who might be on the trading block if New Orleans fails to meet expectations again.

(Top photo of Zion Williamson, CJ McCollum and Brandon Ingram: Garrett Ellwood / NBAE via Getty Images)

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