The Pelicans’ NBA Cup draw is the first real test of Joe Dumars’ bet on this roster, and it doesn’t take long to see what’s at stake.
New Orleans landed in Group B for the 2026-27 tournament, alongside the Oklahoma City Thunder, Memphis Grizzlies, Los Angeles Clippers and Minnesota Timberwolves. The schedule opens with a home game against Minnesota on November 6, then brings Memphis to New Orleans on November 13. From there, the Pelicans head to OKC on November 20 before closing group play on the road against the Clippers on November 27.
For a team trying to convince people it’s ready to matter, this is exactly the kind of bracket that will tell the truth fast.
Last season’s Cup run was a mess, with New Orleans going 0-4, and that kind of start helped drag a 26-win year into the ground. This group is built differently, but the challenge is familiar: there’s a contender in the Thunder, a playoff-caliber team in the Timberwolves, and two clubs in the Clippers and Grizzlies that sit in that tricky middle tier. It’s a clean measuring stick.
And this time, an 0-4 finish would be a problem.
No one is asking the Pelicans to steamroll Oklahoma City, a team with the kind of track record that commands respect. But if New Orleans wants to be taken seriously as a playoff team, anything worse than 2-2 should feel like a missed opportunity.
Beating Memphis and the Clippers has to be the baseline. Those are the games that should show whether this group has enough togetherness and enough punch to handle business against teams that are still sorting themselves out.
That’s where the roster continuity matters. Dumars made his major swing by hiring Jamahl Mosley as the franchise’s next head coach, but otherwise this is almost the same team coming back.
Fourteen of last season’s 15 players are set to return, and that kind of stability is hard to find around the league. It also means there won’t be many excuses if the results don’t show up.
Minnesota is the trickiest wild card in the group, especially if it’s still figuring out how to fit LaMelo Ball into the mix. Even if that process is smoother than expected, the Pelicans should be able to hang in that one. If Mosley is serious about building a defense-first identity, Anthony Edwards and Ball will be one of the toughest perimeter exams they can face.
The Thunder game is the toughest assignment by far, and even there, New Orleans doesn’t need to win to make a point. A competitive showing would say plenty.
In the end, this Cup slate is really a preview of the larger question hanging over the season: Dumars has tied this team’s future to a Zion Williamson-led core, and these early games will start to show whether that gamble was the right one.
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