Copyright Baton Rouge Advocate
The words that once adorned the walls of the New Orleans Pelicans practice facility are a thing of the past. Words like “Mindfulness," “Joy” and “Compassion” that decorated the gym under the David Griffin regime have been replaced by these two simple words: “One Goal.” Next to the words “One Goal” is a giant picture of the Larry O’Brien trophy. No New Orleans team — not the Jazz in the 70s, the Hornets in the early 2000s, nor the Pelicans as they have been called since 2013 — has ever come close to lifting an NBA trophy. But Joe Dumars, who replaced Griffin as the Pelicans’ executive vice president of basketball operations in April, hopes to change that. His first season on the job will answer some key questions for the franchise. The main one, of course, is this one: Are the Pelicans heading in the right direction? But there are plenty more. Will Zion Williamson continue to be the face of the franchise? Will Trey Murphy make the leap to superstar status? Will head coach Willie Green continue to be the one guiding the ship? We’ll find out the answers over the next 82 games, starting Wednesday in Memphis, Tennessee, where the Pelicans play the Grizzlies in their season opener. Realistically, the "one goal" of winning the NBA title is far-fetched this season. Teams that won just 21 games the year before don’t ascend to the top of the NBA ladder right away. Dumars, who has been around the NBA long before the players on the Pelicans roster were born, knows that. “Before you can get to the playoffs or a certain amount of wins, the first thing you have to get to is, 'We compete hard every night,' ” Dumars said. “If you don’t establish that in your building first, you’re just talking. You’re just giving quotes out at that point. For me, it’s a process of establishing a hard, competitive playing team every night. Then we will get to the wins and losses.” Priority No.1 is staying healthy. The Pelicans’ four best returning players (Zion Williamson, Trey Murphy, Herb Jones and Dejounte Murray) missed a combined 194 games last season. The Pelicans' inability to stay healthy is the main reason the team won the second-fewest number of games in franchise history. It came on the heels of a 49-win season, tied for the second-most wins in team history. The oddsmakers in Vegas project the Pelicans to be more like last season than the season before. The over/under on wins set by Vegas is at just 31.5. Expectations from the national media are similarly low. On the contrary, most of the local media members predict they will exceed that low bar. Dumars is taking more of a wait-and-see approach. “It’s a mistake to come in and just say 'We’re going to change things overnight,' ” Dumars said. “It’s just not how sports work. The teams you saw in the Finals (the OKC Thunder and Indiana Pacers), none of that was overnight. That was a process. It’s a process to get teams to where they want to be. But it shouldn’t be a process for the fans to see us play in a style that they like. The success part of it might be more of a process. But the style of play — resilience, toughness, hard, never quit — that’s what we want people to see right away.” Wednesday night in Memphis is step one. A winning season and a trip to the playoffs would be a success. Another dismal outcome like last season would be a disaster, especially for a team that traded away a 2026 first-round draft pick to trade up and select forward Derik Queen. It was a highly scrutinized, high-risk move that Dumars was willing to take. If Queen becomes a star, Dumars' move will be genius. If the Pels struggle this season and Queen never pans out, the trade will be ridiculed for years to come. Dumars’ goal is to have a team that plays with the same toughness and resiliency that the people in New Orleans can relate to. He saw it in Detroit when he won NBA titles as both a player and again as an executive with the Pistons. He’s trying to bring that championship pedigree to New Orleans. Players have taken notice. “You can tell with the energy that Joe has brought in the building that you’re going to have to get after it,” Williamson said. “Nobody is going for that soft stuff. It’s kind of a ‘Bad Boys’ mentality.” Green spends much time in Dumars' office discussing the game. “It’s his presence and his mindset,” Green said. “Knowing what it takes to win championships both as a player and as an executive. I’m learning a lot. It just sets the tone for our culture. Just coming in with that mindset. Understanding that there is a responsibility and a standard that we all want to uphold. It starts with our leadership.” Jordan Poole and Kevon Looney, two veteran players Dumars acquired during the offseason, know what a championship team looks like. Looney won three titles with the Golden State Warriors and Poole won one. Poole likes the make-up of what Dumars has assembled. “As soon as you walk into a locker room at the beginning of the season, you can kinda feel it in the locker room with the guys with the chemistry and camaraderie,” Poole said. “We’ve got guys who compete. You don’t have to make us get after each other or make us play hard against each other. We have guys that naturally want to get better. I think ‘iron sharpens iron’ is a really good quote for this team. ... It’s definitely the elements of a championship team.” Those lofty aspirations aren’t coming this season, especially with the Pelicans playing in a Western Conference that is now more stacked than ever. But the Pelicans will be reminded of the one goal every time they glance at the wall in the team’s practice facility. “I’m not going to put a number on it (a win total) because I don’t know what it is,” Dumars said. “But I expect our team to play hard every night. I expect no less and I will accept no less.”
