The New Orleans Pelicans keep asking Trey Murphy III to be the safety valve, the release point, and the perimeter threat all at once. That’s a tough assignment for any wing, even one as dangerous as Murphy III. The bigger issue is that the roster around him still doesn’t give him much help, and that’s leaving a ceiling on what he can do.
Murphy III posted 21.5 points per game last season, which is a strong number by any standard. But it only represented a 0.3-point bump from the year before, and that tiny climb is part of the concern. The idea that he could grow into a true All-Star level scorer has been floating around the league, but New Orleans hasn’t built an environment that makes that kind of leap likely.
The problem starts with spacing. The Pelicans finished with the fourth-fewest made threes in the NBA last season, and Murphy III was basically the one perimeter player defenses had to respect.
Opponents treated him that way, too. Their game plans all seemed to come with the same message: Murphy III is the shooter, so stay attached to him.
That showed up on the floor and in the numbers. When New Orleans put the ball on the deck, defenses could collapse hard because they didn’t have to stay honest about the rest of the perimeter. Only 24 percent of Murphy III’s three-point attempts last season were classified as wide open by the league’s tracking data.
New Orleans also didn’t really solve the issue in the offseason. Bennedict Mathurin arrived on what the source describes as a great contract, but he’s more of a scorer and slasher than a shooter, and he hit 31.5 percent from three last season. Saddiq Bey had a strong 2025-26 and knocked down 36.7 percent of his threes on 5.7 attempts per game, but his career mark sits at 35.5 percent.
That leaves Murphy III carrying a huge share of the spacing burden, and that’s not the ideal setup for a player whose value rises when the floor opens up around him. Most fans would put him behind only Zion Williamson in terms of importance to the roster, but the way the Pelicans keep building keeps limiting both Murphy III and the team as a whole. With more shooting around him, Murphy III would see cleaner looks and a better chance to reach the kind of scoring level people around the league have imagined for him.
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