The New Orleans Pelicans are open to trading power forwards Nikola Mirotic and Julius Randle, as well as guard E’Twaun Moore, for draft picks, according to ESPN’s Zach Lowe (h/t Andre Lopez of the Times-Picayune:
Per @ZachLowe_NBA: New Orleans made Nikola Mirotic, Julius Randle and E’Twaun Moore available for picks over the weekend. https://t.co/UH9bydEXNI
— Andrew Lopez (@_Andrew_Lopez) January 28, 2019
This news comes on the heels of a catastrophic happening for the Pelicans. On Monday, the news broke that Anthony Davis had requested to be traded from the New Orleans Pelicans. This was a big deal for a couple of reasons. First, it’s not every day that a top-five NBA player requests to be traded. Second, this trade request was a bit more public than the ones we have seen recently, like those made by Jimmy Butler and Kawhi Leonard. The news wasn’t reported from an anonymous source, but on the record from Davis’ agent Rich Paul. The public nature of Paul’s request led to Davis being fined $50,000 by the NBA.
Now that Davis has made it clear he wants to be traded, it seems that New Orlenas has decided they want to blow it up and rebuild; why else would they look to trade Randle, Mirotic and Moore – probably their third-, fourth- and fifth-best players – for assets?
The real question here is whether the Pels can afford to blow up the roster and start from scratch. New Orleans is a football city at heart, and one of the NBA’s tiniest markets. Can the franchise withstand a multi-year rebuild?
