Exits: Tender traps await
The Second Arrangement's Kelly Dwyer with a ramble back, and the way forward, in New Orleans.
There are many benefits to choosing the in-browser version of viewing the NBA playoffs. For one, the ticker is gone, the ongoing playoff game on another channel doesn’t exist, imperative for those of us who delight diving into a hovel during the Late Game, preserving the entirety of its viewing for some unprogrammable hour (2 AM or 2 PM and 2 late for Twitter spoilers) without our surprises ruined, the human person basketball performance explained away by a creeping chyron. Boo, ticker.
The strongest advantage of the League Pass, in-browser viewing is the in-arena experience. The feed stays with the in-arena scoreboard and all its in-arena highlights, it never throws to commercial. The internet complained over that Chet Holmgren/Shai Gilgeous-Alexander ad earlier in the playoffs and I had no idea what the internet was talking about, it was so pleasant.
1The New Orleans broadcast is particularly remarkable, most so the jazz bands working the corridors, sneaking up to the seats for some between-timeout blowing. Humpty tubas, screeching trumpets, lolling trombones, all screaming within inches of the left and right ears of our Pelican fans in front. The fans don’t grimace, they don’t flinch, they nod, they weave, they groove, the tuba’s arm is modeled after the tympanic membrane so it doesn’t distort the way we hear it. Probably.
I want to be at every arena I see on League Pass, but I want to be in the Pelicans’ building. I fear missing out on games at other arenas, but I wish I had a seat in the Pelicans’ place, the people look so nice, happy, fanning themselves with their free fans. Pelicans fans are the only fans who’d know what to do with free fans, theirs isn’t a dry heat.
It can’t be co-incidence that in 24 years of requesting media credentials into 15-different NBA arenas, the Pelicans were the only ones who emailed back saying, hey, man, we don’t have room at press row, but we can totally get you a nice seat. Your author was the one who requested a credential late, way late, he hadn’t planned on being in New Orleans, nobody plans on being in New Orleans unless that’s where the boat pushes off from.
I was in New Orleans for the same reason everyone else goes to New Orleans: I found out my buddy Geoff was in Houston while I was driving outside Katy, a little before midnight, start of the weekend. I didn’t have a place to stay and he had a hotel booked in New Orleans six hours away, the same story you’ve heard endless times, he told me to drive ahead because a Texas State Trooper pulled him over for confusing the on-ramp with a frontage road, this is such a cliche, the Pelicans hosted too many scouting travellers to spare a seat on media row because the Clippers were about to trade Blake Griffin so the Pelicans sat me with the players’ wives, this is so hack, tell me you’re finishing these sentences before reading them.
Now, I’ve returned to New Orleans several times since that weekend, mostly without Geoff, never without a smile. New Orleans is abundantly cheery, participants start the day anguished over humidity and the resentment lasts the time it takes to walk to the car, acceptance insuring those sweating pores, no point staying mad at the rest of the day, this heat isn’t going anywhere, not even overnight, this is why bars stay open all hours, refreshments are required at all times.
This is why the Pelicans give out free fans at playoff games. This is why Pelican fans know what to do with free fans, where to keep them after the game. People need something to create movement in the crippling seconds between when the car starts, and air conditioning kicks in.2
That’s why it’s a giggle fest watching every home Pelican performance, listening to what is probably the NBA’s best local duo (Joel Meyers and Antonio Daniels), trying to make sense out of a team which shouldn’t work well, as it works exceedingly well. Overweight (though less so!) Zion Williamson and overgrown Brandon Ingram plus an overworked shooting guard in C.J. McCollum who is too slow for shooting guard, now working at point guard, an even speedier position, because the Pelicans don’t have another point guard taller than an unfolded trombone standing on end.
Yet the coach pulled a top-seven defense out of that trio plus the team’s outwardly anachronistic (but nice) center Jonas Valanciunas. Coach Willie Green created as much because his fearsome frontcourtsmen — Herb Jones, Trey Murphy III, Larry Nance Jr.’s Acceptable Draymond-routine, the irrepressible Naji Marshall — would not let opponents do what opponents shoulda done with C.J., the step-slow point of attack defender, and Jonas, last century’s starting center.
This kept New Orleans within hold of the West’s No. 6 seed until the West’s final regular season weekend, when the Lakers visited, dragging New Orleans into the Play-In. That tournament went well until Zion’s hamstring’s popped toward the end of his signature NBA effort, New Orleans tossed another game on the fire and dragged out a sad consolation win over sadder Sacramento but by the opening round of the Playoffs, the rulers came out. Oklahoma City was better in most spots, taller in all.
Would the series play for five or six or seven games if Williamson were around, if Ingram’s injury hadn’t wrecked his stamina, if the Pelicans were in the Eastern Conference, if the Smoothie King were the Smoothie Queen, it doesn’t matter: Zion was never something you could credibly pretend would be there, come spring.
He isn’t made for it, not yet at least, but he made strides this season and will absolutely be made for it in 2025 if Williamson sustains 2024’s routine. He worked off the ball and didn’t mope when New Orleans went long stretches without calling his number. Williamson ran his tail off on both ends of the ball and kept a cheerful edge about him, all while playing more games and more minutes than ever. After ignoring his health for a half-decade as a professional, there was something slimmer about his silhouette, but he was never long for a sprint this length, let alone a spring. Williamson will flourish after he keeps at it, surely, there is no reason to discount Zion if he continues chipping at his figure, and improves his NBA-styled endurance.
It made sense for the hamstring to snap in Game No. 71. Williamson’s legs never had to do so much, regardless of the heft Zion’s early-twentysomething habits charged ‘em with holding in campaigns before 2023-24. A delicate hamstring pull after a leaner, much-improved but longer regular season was just as likely as a hamstring yank calling out the end of an overtaxed, on-and-off, churn.
It is part of growing, as is learning which setbacks creep in after growth. Zion played the whole season, then basketball happened. And when he was most basketball! The mostest.
Tender traps await. The club probably will not offer a maximum contract extension to Ingram, a free agent in 2025, while handing large money to Ingram-replacements Murphy and Marshall, and retaining the 32-year old Valanciunas to a sum as hefty as JV’s value (82 appearances in 2023-24, 11 missed games in three seasons with the club) to the Pels. The West is packed, New Orleans worked awfully hard to simply compete in 2023-24, the effort and sacrifice to begat a top-seven defense might turn fat and sassy once these contract extensions start mewing around the office, jumping on the good furniture, not that junk in the hallway but the nicer stuff.
All to be, not as good as the Thunder? The Timberwolves?
The difference is Zion. If he counts this season as an achievement, he’s correct. This wasn’t going to turn around in a year.
Run this way for another year, however, and we’ve developed a draft. Confidence, timing, and the ability to apply wit to the craft. Another 70-odd games of healthy basketball and the body becomes used to this, to straining in April and May. Suddenly Zion Williamson turns into one of the 400-odd NBA players to whom Normal Person Hamstring Pulls don’t happen to.
He has to keep that wind, that smile.
This stunk, that sweep, and next season’s locker room will breed resentment like locker room bathmats breed spores. Stay above it, and below last season’s playing weight, see where April 2025 takes off.
Editor’s note: Listen to Kelly read from here, please. I always hear his voice when I read his writing and now you can, too.
I should’ve asked him to read the whole thing.
Kelly Dwyer is a national treasure
Many blessings for this tribute to the great parts of being a Pels fan, even as the sting of the team face planting into the post-season lingers. So much love for Joel and AD, truly the best in the biz.