The 2025-26 NBA season is here! Over the next few weeks, we’re examining the biggest questions, best- and worst-case scenarios, and win projections for all 30 franchises — from the still-rebuilding teams to the true title contenders.
2024-25 finish
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Record: 21-61 (14th in the West, missed playoffs)
Offseason moves
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Additions: Jordan Poole, Kevon Looney, Saddiq Bey, Derik Queen, Jeremiah Fears, Micah Peavy, Bryce McGowens, Jaden Springer, Jalen McDaniels, Garrison Brooks, Trey Alexander, Hunter Dickinson
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Subtractions: C.J. McCollum, Kelly Olynyk, Bruce Brown, Mojave King, Lester Quiñones, Antonio Reeves, Keion Brooks Jr., Jeremiah Robinson-Earl, Elfrid Payton, Kylor Kelly, Jamal Cain, Brandon Boston Jr.
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(If that seems like a lot of moving pieces, that’s because it is: New Orleans ranks last in the NBA in roster continuity, according to John Schuhmann’s analysis, bidding farewell to 50% of last season’s minutes.)
Zion Williamson, 25, has played a total of 214 games entering his seventh season in New Orleans. (Taylor Wilhelm/Yahoo Sports Illustration)
The Big Question: Can Zion Williamson make it all make sense?
No team caught more shrapnel over the offseason than the Pelicans. (Well, no team without an alleged salary cap circumvention investigation brewing, anyway.)
Pundits and observers all over the league (including here) raked New Orleans’ new braintrust — executive vice president of basketball operations Joe Dumars and senior vice president of basketball operations Troy Weaver — over the coals for their draft-night decision-making. To review:
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New Orleans traded the Pacers’ top-four-protected 2026 first-round pick — potentially valuable, with Tyrese Haliburton rehabilitating his Achilles — back to Indiana in exchange for the 2025 draft’s No. 23 selection;
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The Pels then packaged that No. 23 pick with either their own unprotected 2026 first-rounder or the Bucks’ unprotected 2026 first-rounder — whichever one is better — in a deal with Atlanta to move up to No. 13 and draft Maryland product Derik Queen to pair with Jeremiah Fears.
Turning three potential shots at a top-10 pick in next year’s draft into Queen — a super-talented offensive big man, but also a prospect whose defensive potential, athleticism and conditioning have come under question — drew widespread criticism, both for a reported negotiation behind the trade that almost beggars belief, and for what many considered a faulty overarching thought process.
You just won 21 games, with one of the worst defenses in the NBA, and your hoped-for lead guard, Dejounte Murray, is likely out until at least January as he works his way back from a ruptured Achilles … and you’re trading unprotected picks?
Avoiding the most catastrophic outcome here — handing the Hawks a top pick in a class headlined by mega-prospects like Darryn Peterson, A.J. Dybantsa, Cameron Boozer and Nate Ament — doesn’t just require Queen to look like a budding star after offseason wrist surgery, or the shuffled-up Bucks to make the playoffs. It also requires the Pelicans themselves — owners of last season’s fourth-worst record and second-worst net rating — to vault into the playoff picture in the brutally competitive West.
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That will require better health for a team that lost the fifth-most games in the league to injury last season, according to Spotrac, with Murray, the since-traded Brandon Ingram, All-Defensive wing Herb Jones, ascending two-way swingman Trey Murphy III and Jose Alvarado among the many, many Pelicans who missed significant time. The most important of them, of course: Zion Williamson. And more than anything, New Orleans’ chances of being good enough not to hand Atlanta a golden ticket rest on — stop me if you think you’ve heard this one before — a full, healthy, superstar-level-impact season from one of the most tantalizing, frustrating and inescapably alluring players in the world.
We’ve seen Williamson look like a destroyer of worlds for stretches — like the beginning of the 2022-23 season, when he had the Pelicans looking like a title contender … right up until he suffered a season-ending hamstring injury.
We’ve seen him play a mostly full season, logging 70 games and more than 2,200 minutes in 2023-24 … but with his scoring, rebounding, field-goal percentage and overall impact dipping in the process. Those Pels won 49 games and made the play-in tournament, with Zion looking like the best player on the floor against the Lakers … right up until he hurt his hamstring.
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What we haven’t seen since 2020-21, though — when he played 61 of 72 games, averaged 27 points per game on 61.1% shooting, and earned his first All-Star berth — is Zion doing both. The Pelicans need him to be that kind of ever-present and overwhelming; they need him to take the stretch he had last season when he looked like he’d leveled up as a playmaker and all-around force (right up until, natch, he was shut down with a back injury) and maintain it for 70 games.
Give me a healthy Williamson, Jones and Murphy — playmaking, size, shooting and athleticism across the 2 through 4 spots, with Jones reclaiming his spot as arguably the best perimeter defender in the league — and you can talk me into the shot-creation swings on Jordan Poole, who bounced back from an “oops, all memes!” 2023-24 in Washington to average 20.5 points and 4.5 assists per game on .591 true shooting last season, and Fears, a hiccup-quick penetrator whom our Kevin O’Connor actually compared to Poole coming out of Oklahoma. Piece together that kind of offensive firepower on the perimeter, and maybe the question marks at center — second-year pros Yves Missi and Karlo Matković, rookie Queen, veteran giving tree Looney — and on defense more broadly become less worrisome. (Willie Green, who conjured up consecutive top-10 finishes in defensive efficiency in 2022-23 and ’23-24, has his work cut out for him.)
[Get more Pelicans news: New Orleans team feed]
The only way it all works, though, is if Williamson stays on the court. The Pelicans have projected confidence in him doing so, with Dumars guaranteeing his contract and calling on the former No. 1 overall pick to be “responsible and accountable” to his teammates and the franchise. Williamson has responded by getting in what appears to be the best shape of his professional career, telling reporters on media day that he hasn’t felt this good since his reality-rending lone year at Duke and that he’s ready to give “whatever my team needs.”
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More than anything, it needs him — all of him, all the time. Anything less, and drastic changes could be coming in New Orleans.
Best-case scenario
Lucy finally lets Charlie Brown kick the football. Zion puts it all together, playing 70-plus games, making All-NBA First Team, finishing on or just outside the MVP ballot, and returning to the All-Star team … where he’s joined by Murphy, who builds on the leap he took last season before tearing his labrum. After playing a grand total of zero minutes together last season, Williamson, Jones and Murphy form one of the league’s most frequently used and potent trios, providing an elevated baseline and support structure that allows youngsters Fears, Queen and Missi to get in where they fit in. Poole continues last season’s resurgence, Murray comes back looking like the star they traded for him to be, and the Pelicans ride a top-10 offense to a top-10 seed in the West — postseason participation that makes the pick debt to Atlanta less onerous.
If everything falls apart
Williamson can’t stay healthy, the house of cards crumbles, the Pelicans took on $65.9 million worth of Poole for no tangible benefit, and they watch the Hawks take a top-five pick off their hands.
2025-26 schedule
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Season opener: Oct. 22 at Memphis
If Zion plays 60 games, I think the Pelicans will win at least half of them, which would leave us with the over. All that’s left, then, is to put our money down on Zion staying healthy.
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No, by all means: You go first.
More season previews
East: Atlanta Hawks • Boston Celtics • Brooklyn Nets • Charlotte Hornets • Chicago Bulls • Cleveland Cavaliers • Detroit Pistons • Indiana Pacers • Miami Heat • Milwaukee Bucks • New York Knicks • Orlando Magic • Philadelphia 76ers • Toronto Raptors • Washington Wizards
West: Dallas Mavericks • Denver Nuggets • Golden State Warriors • Houston Rockets • Los Angeles Clippers • Los Angeles Lakers • Memphis Grizzlies • Minnesota Timberwolves • New Orleans Pelicans • Oklahoma City Thunder • Phoenix Suns • Portland Trail Blazers • Sacramento Kings • San Antonio Spurs • Utah Jazz
