Rival teams think Pelicans have ‘f***ing idiots’ in charge

To say front offices around the NBA do not think highly of the New Orleans Pelicans’ executives would be a massive understatement.

In the aftermath of the Pelicans’ stunning and highly criticized draft-day trade with the Atlanta Hawks, insiders have begun to report how dysfunctional and incompetent the New Orleans front office is believed to be by the rest of the NBA.

“The league wide skepticism on the Pelicans started when Joe Dumars was named the head of basketball operations and only grew when Troy Weaver was brought into the fold. When the Pelicans traveled up to Chicago for the NBA Draft Combine a month prior, the league had already placed a target on their back,” Pelicans insider Shamit Dua wrote on his ‘In The N.O.’ Substack.

“Man they were killing them up there,” one agent told Dua, referring to other front offices. “They think they got f—in idiots in charge. It got so bad, I just felt sorry.”

Dua also wrote that teams had been “jockeying for the privilege” to trade with the Pelicans.

“More than one executive jokingly expressed to me that the Pelicans are going to be their first call,” Dua wrote.

The perception of the Pelicans’ front office is about as unflattering as it could be — unless they were Nico Harrison following the Luka Doncic trade. Unfortunately for Pelicans fans, New Orleans made a similarly stupefying deal that seemed to send the rest of the NBA and its media into a frenzy, but not in a good way.

On draft night, the Pelicans traded a pair of picks, including a seemingly very valuable 2026 first-rounder — it is the more favorable of the Pelicans and Bucks’ picks — for the No. 13 selection they used on Derik Queen. The instant reactions to the trade were brutal; popular podcaster Bill Simmons called the deal “one of the five dumbest trades of this decade,” ClutchPoints’ Anthony F. Irwin said, “[i]t took all of 15 minutes for Joe Dumars to step in and grab the belt for worst exec,” and an assistant general manager in the league reportedly told The Athletic that it was “the worst trade, non-Luka division, that we’ve seen in at least a decade.”

So far this offseason, Dumars’ first since succeeding David Griffin at the head of the Pelicans’ front office, New Orleans has signed Kevon Looney and traded away CJ McCollum and Kelly Olynyk for Jordan Poole and Saddiq Bey. In addition to Queen, the Pelicans drafted Jeremiah Fears with the seventh pick and acquired second-round selection Micah Peavy from the Washington Wizards in the Poole and Bey deal.