Pelicans Are Setting Jamahl Mosley Up to Fail

The New Orleans Pelicans have yet to make any changes to the roster that won 26 games last season. Despite being one of the worst teams in two seasons in a row, with essentially the same core, the Pelicans have been unwilling to change things up. Other than bringing in Jamahl Mosley as the head coach, New Orleans has not done anything to suggest that things will be different next season. 

The problem is, the Pelicans aren’t even putting Mosley in a position to succeed. Bringing back the same team, which had the worst big man rotation in the entire league last season, and expecting Mosley to work a miracle is not fair to the former Magic head coach. 

Jamahl Mosley Can't Work a Miracle With This Pelicans Roster

Mosley is a good defensive coach. He did an excellent job building a defensive identity in Orlando. His teams consistently defended at an elite level. New Orleans was hoping that he would bring some of those defensive fundamentals to the young Pelicans team. 

To defend at a high level, however, you need good defenders, especially in the frontcourt. You at least need to have some size, physicality, and length. The Pelicans don’t have that, and the front office hasn’t done anything to fix it. 

Sure, the Pelicans would love it if Derik Queen and Jeremiah Fears took significant steps forward in their second season. Both youngsters need to improve on that end of the floor. But the Pelicans aren’t building the right defensive ecosystem for them to flourish. 

The only traditional centers on this team are DeAndre Jordan and Yves Missi. Jordan is only on the roster for his locker room presence. Missi has the potential to be a solid rotation player for a long time, but he is not a starting-caliber force on either end of the floor. 

This is a major obstacle for a team trying to build a respectable defense, especially if that team has Derik Queen and Zion Williamson as their power forwards. 

Both Queen and Williamson create serious defensive issues. They are too slow to guard out in the perimeter, but are also not physical enough to guard centers. They are also two of the worst rebounders of their position. 

The lack of options at center will mean that Queen will likely play extended minutes as the center next to Williamson. This pairing was a disaster defensively last season. Queen could certainly take a step forward, and Mosley could help them figure it out, but there is only so much you can do with that type of size and length deficiency. 

Moreover, the rest of the league will be much better next season. Thanks to the new lottery rules that incentivize winning among non-playoff teams, everyone else around the Pelicans will be trying until the end. 

New Orleans stumbled into 26 wins last season when almost a third of the league stopped trying after the trade deadline. That type of egregious tanking isn’t going to happen next season, which means that the Pelicans have to be better next season just to get to the same number of wins. 

Unfortunately, Mosley doesn’t have the personnel to be much better than that next season, especially in the stacked Western Conference. Unless Joe Dumars and Troy Weaver wake up from their long naps and make some moves to upgrade the roster, Mosley is being set up to fail.