No Trade! Pelicans’ Best Move Is to Build Around Jeremiah Fears and Derik Queen—Not Trade Stars
New Orleans Pelicans face a turning point as trade season heats up—could tearing down the roster jeopardize the growth of rookies Jeremiah Fears and Derik Queen? Should Zion Williamson, Trey Murphy, and Herb Jones stay to support the team’s future, or will pressure mount for a fire sale ahead of the NBA Draft?
Jake Madison breaks down the impact of keeping veteran talent and why development around core prospects must remain a top priority. Hot topics include rumored trade interest in Trey Murphy and Herb Jones, the realistic market for Jose Alvarado, and the latest buzz around Zion Williamson’s long-term value. With insights on salary cap strategy, team culture, and the importance of avoiding a hasty rebuild, this episode explores what it will take for the Pelicans to return to winning basketball and build a competitive core for next season. Is patience the key, or should New Orleans shake up the roster now?
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33 Comments
Gotta disagree. Everybody been saying for years dont trade herb or trey. Season is lost cant keep bringing back same core with losing results
If anybody gets traded it will be phat-man if someone makes us a 'stupid offer'. Next up would be GTA.
Congratulations on your marriage and honey moon. I agree with you Jake gotta keep the team together. I don’t think you will get anything for Zion because of the injury history maybe some role players and maybe late first pick no team with a top 5 pick will trade that pick to you. Jose is also a great leader for fears and Zion is great guy to help Queen not get doubled. You just have to stay healthy. You don’t even know if Murray will play many minutes to start or how good he will be after not playing for basically a whole year.
Trading Zion” will not hurt nothing at all trust me because Zion is never there anyway so it will not make a difference.. TRADE ZION NOW!!
Except for moving K Looney, the team is becoming more cohesive and should stay together. If Zion can stay healthy/ no back to back games, and a healthy D Murray can come back 🤞, all is good. Alvarado could go, although he appears to be a team favorite. ⚜️
Congrats Jake! everytime Zion goes down, I'm ready to trade him and as he comes back and drop those numbers, I'm like maybe he stays healthy this time .( I would be horrible with a cheating wife) Officially glad we didn't take Ja instead but it took awhile. another head case
Does zion get injured alot. Yes. But this is truly the first time i have seen him come back from an injury and look better than before the injury. He is maintaining a great playing weight right now. To the people who want him traded, i understand your frustration but we all agree when he is on the court he is a top phemon. It also makes no sense to trade him when we NEED to win games so we can teach the rookies how to play winning basketball and keep Atlanta from securing a top 3 pick. It would be awful having atlanta fans laugh at us for trading zion so we can tank for them to get the #1 pick. Are you guys crazy for wanting to give fears and queen more minutes so we can trade zion and increase our lottery odds. You guys also forget, guys like murphy, herb, poole, murray are not here to rebuild. If you trade zion you have to trade all those dudes.too. those dudes are making the rookies look good too. the original plan under dumars was to allow poole, murray and zion play two years together and see if they can make an impact. I believe after next season all three contract will be up. Zion was hurt i get it, but it allowed the rookies to gain confidence and now zion is coming off the bench and to be honest, having zion on this team is fun and must watch NBA becuase the rookies know how to play better now.
I would.let zion play out his contract and ask him to come back on a team friendly contract knowing he will play under 25minutes a night. He rewards new orleans for sticking with him. New orleans gets a awesome talent at a discount. What people also seem to forget is zion loves new orleans, he always praises the city. To me he is a son of new orleans. You dont have him bad mouthing the city and organization like ingram, dyson, hart, davis etc etc. Give zion some.love he has always had our backs when the media trashes our city. Dear God almighty, give grace and allow the pelicans to stay healthy
Like okc and Indiana we can win off depth. I like this team. Just gotta get healthy. Ppl forget when dejontae Murray is on the court he is one of the best 2 way players in the league. We gotta lot of talent. If we trade zion. We need a real star back
Hope Dejounte returns strong and we can get a late 1st and an expiring for him. I’d take a 2nd.
Sorry Jake, but Zion has to go!!!! Get rid of Zion, and move Queen to power forward.
We need to see what this roster can do its been looking a lot better since JB took over
Welcome back Jake!
Every dayer comment
I wouldn’t even trade Trey for kuminga and a lottery pick
Jake you R RIGHT AGAIN. 👍🏿👍🏿👍🏿👍🏿👍🏿🎤
Evrday
Everydayer here. Even with the loses, the occasional wins, the rooks, Zion back early, and the trade talk still fun to me. Thanks Jake for making this mess of a season interesting. I look forward to listening to your takes
I get moving off of Jose especially if we are going to have Poole, Fears, Murray on the roster next season. We 100% need to move off of Zion even if we take back some long term money. Just waiving him doesn’t add to the team as we will still be over the cap and can’t rent out our cap space. Also just not having the air sucked out of the team when Zion gets injured will be amazing for the team.
Hi Jake
It would be nice if Zion would agree to take a pay cut to stay in NO. It's only fair to get paid less when you play <50% of the time.
Keeping the core also helps assess what kind of coach we currently have, trading the core would make it impossible for JB to succeed and you would just be writing him off. But, I also think trading Herb is not a bad idea for a few reasons. He could get a decent return, and additional draft picks is always a good thing (even if you have two good young players – you can always use more cheap labor down the road). And if you wait until after his salary goes up, that may make it harder to get that value. Also, DJ returning will make the rotation quite crowded. And lastly, Herb doesn't help the young players as much as Trey or Zion. It would put pressure on Bryce/Micah/DJ/Bey to handle the defensive side, but it may be doable.
i would trade jones and hawkins because murray is coming back and byrce needs more minutes
Welcome back
Thats fine, but Derik Queen better stop with these 2pt, 4pt and 6pt games right after he has a good game…. We need consistency, he can't be taking games off. Gotta mature FAST
Welcome back! Congrats on the wedding! EVERYDAYER….
Is there a trade out there that brings next years first round pick back to the Pels from the Hawks???
It would only make sense if their star player, with their $40 million salary, actually performed well. Zion doesn't help Queen and Fears develop at all.
Finally someone making sense! Media and people always go to the trade away and rebuild from scratch like it’s Xbox 2K. You need to develop the rooks by having a really good player and crafty vets around them to teach them how to be a pro on and off the court.
I beg the differ – Jose is an overlooked impact player that should not be traded but recognized for his contribution.
I'm a native New Orleanian and have witneesed many players, both Saints and NBA players, leave New Orleans and become superstars – Why?
We have only seen Zion under Willie Green. Before trading Z for pennies let’s see what this could look like. We’d be dumb not to. High reward little risk.
Great video. Be careful though when you evaluate Dejounte’s trade value. Dejounte is a classic buy low candidate for other teams. It’s a tricky situation for the Pelicans to navigate due 1) the timing of his free agency next offseason 2) his comments in the offseason about the franchise facilities, and 3) most of all, his injury… BUT he is a moveable contract without attaching a pick. I still think a team would buy low on him. He’s not old and he is good. He’s a Valuable big guard.
I’m in the minority here. But i gotta lay it down. the idea that the Pelicans should trade Zion is fake news. The idea that he’s a poor character who doesn’t take care of himself well enough to stay here is fake news.
He’s one season removed from playing 70 games.
The idea, still, even though it hasn’t been executed, should be to get to the playoffs with a healthy Zion.
Zion had 16 free throw attempts this season in a game vs Wembemyana. He’s a special talent still.
You’ve got Fears Queen on rookie scale deals and both will take a jump in year 2. You’ve Dejounte coming back from injury next year or at least as a trade chip if you know he’s gonna walk next offseason.
The pelicans are a small market team. Even mid market teams don’t have success in free agency generally… remember when he had cap space and got Omer Asik, E.Moore, and Solomon Hill? We don’t land good two way players in free agency.
I’m not saying it’s impossible but I’d say it’s highly unlikely we’d successfully replace Zion with 45-50 mil of well spent cap anyway. Zion at 70 games for 20-25 minutes a night is worth more than what we’d get in free agency and would be more exciting to watch and give the team more upside.
Add more talent, don’t give away your future draft recklessly. Keep going.
Small market teams have to ignore national media narratives
At first I agree, but I don’t think it’s impossible to have good players around Fears and Queen after trading Trey Herb and basically everyone. We would likely be worse over, but we’d also have a tonne more capital if done right