Wild hair and ginormous beard. Pelicans GM Jestor? No! It's Coby White
After the Los Angeles Clippers sniped Princepal Singh and obliterated an S&T that would have landed the Pelicans their new starting PF, New Orleans shocked some observers by pivoting to sign 28 year old point guard Coby White, who was renounced by the defending champion Atlanta Hawks to a 4 year, $28 million flat-rate contract at $7 million a year and a team option in the final season.
Not since the Laker Jestor days of Jeremy Lin (the last time a Jestor CSL franchise made the postseason outright) has there been such a jaw-dropping playmaker point guard. His defense was also exceptional in his limited minutes last season, continuing the trend we've seen since the clear-out of the Pelicans acquiring players who are tough on that side of the ball.
What that signing suggests:
1. The team wasn't comfortable with either Scotty Pippen, Jr. or Hassani Gravett starting at point guard in case Afernee Simons got injured.
Although Simons has started 82 games for two straight regular season campaigns, an injury to him would have meant pressing either the raw rookie (Pippen) or the mediocre defender (Gravett) into service. Neither one would be an ideal option next to Tyrese Maxey, even given Maxey's better than eye-test defense by the metrics. New Orleans was commenting third point guard in trade discussions, but secretly, they really wanted a reliable replacement in the event of a Simons injury. Oh, and White has several years worth of starting experience - including for the Golden State Warriors' surprise run to the CSL Finals in 2025.
2. None of the remaining bigs appealed to their needs in terms of big contracts.
Yes, the Pelicans have been swanning around for a new starting PF. But after Reggie Perry returned to Atlanta, Bam Adebayo got shipped to San Antonio, and the Singh S&T got shattered, there was nothing left in a remarkably top-heavy PF class who appealed. And look at the trade blocks - everyone is hunting for either point guards or bigs.
3. Doc Rivers wanted the ability to throw out different lineups.
As remarkable as the team's run to the play-in game was last season, a white-hot start fizzled out as opposing teams started to solve the Thunder and Lightning backcourt - especially with Victor "Wemby" Wembanyama failing to make as dramatic a leap as everyone was expecting after his sensational training camp last year. Now the coaching staff can throw together a lot of different looks and have a deep pool of perimeter players to choose from in Simons, Maxey, White, Pippen, Gravett, the returned Aaron Wiggins, and exciting second-round selection Cedric Henderson Jr. There's even talk of a wild lineup of
PG White
SG Maxey
SF Simons
in the 1-3 spots as an experiment to see what happens.
4. Preseason is going to be a hell of a lot of fun.
Because of #3, look to see a lot of different combinations get utilized. The baseline is Simons/Maxey/Wiggins/Olivier-Maxence Prosper/Mark Williams in place of Wemby as the lineup that worked quite well for most of the season last year. Now there's a ton of different possible options on the table, and the Pelicans' playbook just opened up to a lot of new looks to figure out.
5. This is going to be an exceptionally deep team on the perimeter.
Simons, Maxey, and White are all three capable, proven CSL starters at the guard spots. Wiggins has a lengthy career as a starting glue guy SF. CHJ looks like the second coming of him. Pippen, Jr. is a promising combo guard. Gravett is a sharpshooter combo guard with scoring pop. That's already a much deeper and more versatile set of players than New Orleans ended the year with last season {Remember Bones Hyland and Hugo Besson? Old Jestor favorite clearly past his prime Dikembe Dixson?
Will it be enough to lift the Pelicans into the true blue playoffs this season? Unknown. But it certainly puts them in a much better position to at least repeat as a play-in team.
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