At 12-37, the New Orleans Pelicans are expected to be sellers at the Feb. 5 trade deadline, but it now sounds like they won’t be moving any of their big-name players this season.
According to William Guillory of The Athletic, sources said “it’s unlikely” that forwards Zion Williamson, Trey Murphy III or Herb Jones are traded before next week’s deadline. New Orleans is known to be “focused on building a future around 2025 first-round picks Jeremiah Fears and Derik Queen,” but the team reportedly still feels that Murphy, Jones and Williamson “can be foundational pieces of the puzzle moving forward.”
Williamson, the No. 1 overall pick in the 2019 draft, is in the midst of another disappointing season of bouncing in and out of the lineup due to injuries. Still, he leads the Pelicans with 22.0 points per game, so they’re not ready to give up on him just yet.
Instead, New Orleans has been rumored to be in pursuit of Memphis Grizzlies star point guard Ja Morant, who was drafted one pick after Williamson in 2019. However, Guillory reported that a league source said the rumor of a trade for Morant in exchange for veteran guards Jordan Poole and Dejounte Murray was “completely false,” and the chances of Morant landing in New Orleans are “extremely low because the team believes in Fears as its point guard of the future.”
The Pelicans are also fielding trade interest for center Yves Missi, with Guillory naming the Indiana Pacers, Toronto Raptors and New York Knicks among the teams in pursuit of him. However, it was also noted that “it’s not a foregone conclusion” that New Orleans will trade him, either.
Guillory added that “the growing sentiment” is that the Pelicans are motivated to trade Poole or Murray, if not both of them, due to their large contracts.
The Feb. 5 deadline is quickly approaching, so teams are running out of time to try to poach some promising young players from New Orleans.