Season Wrap: The 2024-25 New Orleans Pelicans

  • By Mike Passador

    Last Updated on May 27, 2025 1:26 pm by Mike Passador | Published: May 27, 2025

    The Pelicans made a bold offseason move to bring in Dejounte Murray, hoping that yet another infusion of talent could get the team back into the postseason. With Murray added to a group including Zion Williamson, Brandon Ingram and CJ McCollum, plus young guys on the up like Trey Murphy and Herb Jones, the Pelicans had designs on making some real noise. Surely, one of these years the team would catch some breaks and get going in the right direction.

    How’d It Go?

    The Pelicans bottomed out and rarely got to see the roster as constructed. Injuries wiped out pretty much every key contributor and Brandon Ingram’s looming contract situation cast a pall over the proceedings as well, with his Pelicans tenure ending uneventfully via trade to Toronto. Ingram missed five games with a calf injury a month into the season and then sustained a sprained left ankle that wound up costing him the final 58 (!) games of the campaign. That was the most frustrating/confounding of the Pelicans’ injuries on the year, but far from the only one.

    CJ McCollum suffered a groin injury four games into the season and missed the next 13. Defensive stalwart Herb Jones also got hurt four games into the season, suffering a shoulder injury that cost him the following 18 contests — and later the whole season when he tore his rotator cuff in January. Trey Murphy missed the first 10 games of the season with a right hamstring injury and would go on to suffer a torn right labrum in March. Dejounte Murray played on opening night, missed the next 17 games with a fractured left hand and then tore his right Achilles at the end of January. Which brings us to Zion Williamson.

    Zion missed opening night with an illness and then 27 games with a left hamstring strain just six outings into his season. He returned in January and ended up giving fantasy GMs about eight weeks of action, with regular nights off, before sitting out the last 12 games of the year with back troubles. The face of the franchise was once again unavailable for most of the season and until Williamson is around to push his game to another level, the Pelicans are merely a theoretical playoff team. New Orleans never had a game with the entire group of Williamson, Murray, Ingram, Murphy, McCollum and Jones in the lineup together, spelling their doom in the vicious Western Conference. They were 4-16 by the end of November and 5-28 after December, eliminating any hopes of a playoff push as the team got healthier.

    It wasn’t all bad, at least. Murphy was dynamite and looks ready to take on a starring role. His play made it very easy for the Pelicans to move on from Ingram without even getting into serious contract talks. The Pelicans didn’t invest a ton into filling out the center spot after letting Jonas Valanciunas walk, and rookie Yves Missi ended up as the starter after an early dalliance with Daniel Theis. Missi got valuable developmental reps and should be the athletic rim presence that the team has been missing. Fellow rookie Karlo Matkovic also had his moments, and the Pels added a pair of helpful veterans at the trade deadline that should bolster the rotation going forward. The Pelicans might have something if they could stay healthy, but where have we heard that before?

    Coaching

    Willie Green is sitting with a .451 record through four years of running the show in New Orleans. Injuries make for a built-in excuse but the seat should be getting hot. The main task for Green has been building a rotation to maximize Zion Williamson’s strengths. The problem is that Williamson has been barely present, leaving Green with a roster that’s missing its theoretical foundational piece. On the flip side, even with Zion out of the picture, the Pelicans haven’t been short on raw talent (aside from the second half of this past season) and it’s difficult to point to a year where the team outperformed its expectations under Green’s watch. It’s a squad that consistently feels like less than the sum of its parts.

    The Pelicans’ defense cratered this season, going from 6th in defensive rating to 29th, largely due to minimal contributions from Herb Jones. As far as offensive rating goes, the Pels fell from 11th to 25th. Again, it’s hard not to blame injuries here, but with so little success in four years and a new front office group coming in, Green may not be long for a job. He was brought in to change the culture and develop a young group; the culture has certainly changed from the Alvin Gentry, Stan Van Gundy days, but the results haven’t been there. A lot of things that have transpired have been out of Green’s control — Zion’s health, Brandon Ingram showing up disgruntled because of contract talks, last season’s significant injuries — but you can’t shake the feeling that he isn’t getting the best out of what he has available. Coaches entering rebuilds get a few years’ worth of leeway but that’s not the situation Green signed up for.

    The Players

    Trey Murphy III
    SF, New Orleans Pelicans
    SeasonTeamGPGSMPG FGMFGAFG% FTMFTAFT% 3PTM3PTA3PT% PTSREBAST STLBLKTO
    24-25 NO 53 51 35.0 7.2 15.8 45.4 3.8 4.3 88.7 3.0 8.3 36.1 21.2 5.1 3.5 1.1 0.7 1.9
    23-24 NO 57 23 29.6 4.8 10.9 44.3 2.2 2.6 81.5 3.0 7.8 38.0 14.8 4.9 2.2 0.9 0.5 0.6
    22-23 NO 79 65 31.0 4.9 10.1 48.4 2.2 2.4 90.5 2.6 6.3 40.6 14.5 3.6 1.4 1.1 0.5 0.8

    ADP: 96.9/138.7 (Yahoo/ESPN) | Total Value: 76/72 (8/9-cat) | Per-Game Value: 35/27 (8/9-cat)

    It was the second season in a row where Murphy wasn’t ready for opening night; in 2023-24 he missed 19 games following knee surgery and this year it was the first 10 due to a hamstring strain. That said, fantasy GMs will give Murphy lots of grace to get up to speed if he’s going to continue being an elite per-game contributor. The Pelicans’ offseason moves tilted towards increased spacing and Murphy looked ready for a major role after the way he closed out 2023-24, so everything was pointing in the right direction. Add in the injuries to Brandon Ingram, CJ McCollum, Herb Jones and Dejounte Murray, and it was all systems go.

    Murphy took on a leading offensive role and thrived, notching career-bests in points and assists (as well as rebounds and blocks) while matching his previous bests in 3-pointers (and steals). An expanded game with a bit more juice off the dribble and a little more across the board was helpful and Murphy can only grow from the experience of having to carry a team offensively. He was the No. 12 player in 9-cat heading into the All-Star break, averaging 22.4 points, 5.2 rebounds, 3.6 assists, 1.2 steals, 0.7 blocks and 3.2 3-pointers on .463 shooting from the field.

    Murphy slipped a bit after the break as he faced a lot more defensive attention once the Pelicans started to tank, and his season was ended by a torn right labrum that cost him the final 13 contests. Even though Murphy faded to end the season before disappearing entirely, he was a massive win relative to his ADP. He — and savvy fantasy managers — tends to benefit from the fact that the stat set features consistent “good” production across the box rather than one or two “elite” figures. Murphy gives you a little of everything without hurting you anywhere, and he has managed to maintain that reputation as his responsibilities have increased. You can’t ask for much more than that.

    Zion Williamson
    PF, New Orleans Pelicans
    SeasonTeamGPGSMPG FGMFGAFG% FTMFTAFT% 3PTM3PTA3PT% PTSREBAST STLBLKTO
    24-25 NO 30 30 28.6 9.6 16.9 56.7 5.3 8.0 65.6 0.1 0.4 23.1 24.6 7.2 5.3 1.2 0.9 3.0
    23-24 NO 70 70 31.5 8.9 15.6 57.0 5.0 7.1 70.2 0.1 0.3 33.3 22.9 5.8 5.0 1.1 0.7 2.8
    22-23 NO 29 29 33.0 9.8 16.2 60.8 6.1 8.6 71.4 0.2 0.7 36.8 26.0 7.0 4.6 1.1 0.6 3.4

    ADP: 46.6/35.6 (Yahoo/ESPN) | Total Value: 257/272 (8/9-cat) | Per-Game Value: 68/102 (8/9-cat)

    Williamson continued to frustrate Pelicans fans and fantasy managers with yet another season of questionable durability. He missed 27 games with a hamstring strain and the final 12 of the year with a bone bruise in his back, as well as a few more due to illness/conditioning/rest along the way. The big man really only dealt with two injuries, but they ended up being significant bookends in another season in which he was out more than in.

    It’s a shame, because Williamson continued to show progress in the box score. He has always needed to round out the rest of his game and Williamson produced career-highs in assists, steals and blocks while matching his previous best in rebounds and improving year-over-year as a scorer — despite losing about three minutes per game from 2023-24. He was on a major tear prior to the back injury and ended up inside the top-65 of the 9-cat rankings from the All-Star break onward, averaging 24.8 points, 7.0 rebounds, 5.8 assists, 1.2 steals and 0.8 blocks on .597 shooting from the field.

    As Williamson rounded the sharp edges of his stat set, there was still one major problem — his work at the charity stripe. Zion undid three years of gains and shot .650 on eight attempts per game, which was as bad as it got for fantasy unless your name was Giannis. If you punted free throw percentage however, Williamson was the 19th-ranked player in 9-cat scoring on a per-game basis. The consistent lack of availability is clouding over what has been genuine improvement in a few key places. Eventually we’ll catch lightning in a bottle and get to see this version of Williamson for a real season, right?

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    May 27, 2025, 1:19 pm