The New Orleans Pelicans are walking into training camp with a roster that looks familiar, a coach built for the kind of identity they say they need, and a fan base that has heard the promises before. What has to change is simple: the results.
After a 26-win season last year, the first under executive vice president of basketball operations Joe Dumars, and a 21-win campaign the year before that, the Pelicans spent media day talking less about splash and more about accountability. Dejounte Murray made the point plain.
“I’m here to win games,” Murray said. “I don’t want to continue to just talk about it or bull**** about it. I want to win as bad as the fans want to win.”
That urgency is going to matter because the offseason did not bring a major overhaul. The biggest addition was Bennedict Mathurin in free agency, and beyond that New Orleans is leaning on a core group that includes Zion Williamson, Trey Murphy, Herb Jones, Murray, Saddiq Bey, Yves Missi, and second-year players Jeremiah Fears and Derik Queen.
Dumars said the mood around the team is different, and he pointed to the work the players put in this summer as evidence.
“We are all looking forward to it,” Dumars said. “Everybody is excited about this season, the possibilities.
We have a good group. We have a group that is really, really thirsty to turn things around and have a winning season.
We’re going to do everything in our power to make this a much better season than last year. I feel good about it.”
One of the clearest reasons for that optimism is health. The Pelicans are heading into camp fully healthy, something that has not always been the case when practices opened in past years. Dumars also said the team’s offseason work level jumped, describing it as “twice as hard” as a year ago, with social media filled by workout clips almost daily.
Those workouts weren’t just about reps. They were about building connections.
Williamson and Bey worked together in South Carolina. Murray and Fears trained in Seattle.
Queen and DeAndre Jordan got in work together in California. The idea was to create some chemistry before the season even starts.
Still, Williamson kept the focus on the only thing that really changes the conversation.
“We can be best friends all we want,” Williamson said. “If we don’t yield results, it doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things.”
Dumars brought in Jamahl Mosley to coach the team, and the expectation is that Mosley’s defensive mindset will bring a harder edge to a group that has lacked it. Mosley said the offseason workouts showed him exactly what he wanted to see.
“The work ethic,” Mosley said. “I think there is a commitment by each guy to put in this work to understand exactly how much you have to do just to be even in this league.”
Dumars spent his first year in New Orleans studying the organization from every angle, and that evaluation led to changes. Willie Green was fired as head coach just 12 games into the season, and there were also shifts in the front office, including on the medical staff.
“Internal improvement,” Dumars said. “We’ve got to get better inside the building first.
I don’t think all of your improvements are from outside. We didn’t make a ton of moves.
But we like the moves we made.”
That’s the path now: fewer changes, more responsibility on the group already in place. Dumars said the roster has the kind of toughness and competitiveness he wanted, and he believes it has enough depth that no single player has to carry everything.
“We brought in some guys that have a tough, competitive spirit about them,” Dumars said. “It wasn’t really so much about the quantity but the quality of the type of guys we brought in.
We are deep enough on this team now that we don’t have to put it all on anybody’s back. Whether it’s Zion or Trey or whoever, that’s just not the way I believe in building teams.”
He didn’t put a number on what would make the season a success, but he did say the target is clear.
“We’d like to be a playoff team,” Dumars said. “We have people in the building that want to win.
Before you become a successful team, everybody in the building has to believe that we can do this. If you have people in your building doubting that, it’s hard to win.
"We are putting in the work. Twenty-nine other teams are putting in the work as well. So we are almost required to work just as hard as anyone else to change our fortunes here in New Orleans.”
Murray echoed that idea, stressing that this can’t be treated like a one-man fix.
“Everybody’s got to understand it’s a collective unit,” Murray said. “It’s not tennis, a one-on-one game.
We need everybody to do their job from top to bottom, bottom to top. I don’t really want to talk too much.
But I really want to see and feel what it’s like to be in this city and win.”
That feeling has been rare. The franchise has won two playoff series in its history, and the Pelicans know that past is sitting there with them as they open another season.
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