This might catch some folks off guard, because Missi’s rookie season shattered expectations in terms of both his workload and his production. Last year’s 21st pick wound up logging the fourth-most minutes in his draft class (1,956) and started 67 of the 73 games he played.<\/p>\n
That wasn’t what might have Missi miffed, though. Rather, it’s everything the Pelicans have been doing since his All-Rookie second-team campaign came to a close that could have him nervous about a future in New Orleans.<\/p>\n
First, New Orleans not only spent a lottery pick on another big man (Derik Queen), it paid so much to move up the board that the trade “had execs around the league already chortling in the moments after the draft,” per The Athletic’s John Hollinger<\/a>. That price, for the record, was an unprotected 2026 first-round pick, which will be the better of the Pelicans’ pick or the Milwaukee Bucks’. And for those unfamiliar, the 2026 draft class looks loaded at the top<\/a>.<\/p>\n Later, New Orleans made its biggest free agency splash in the form of veteran center Kevon Looney, who was coaxed away from the Golden State Warriors with a two-year, $16 million deal. That’s a healthy enough investment to imagine Looney will be a significant factor in the team’s interior rotation. The same holds true for Queen\u2014or rather, it will once he’s back wrist surgery\u2014who probably needs to play the 5 to see major minutes whenever Zion Williamson is healthy.<\/p>\n Not to mention that Missi, your prototypical rim-runner, would work best alongside a visionary playmaker, which isn’t exactly the way one would describe New Orleans’ new starting point guard, Jordan Poole (4.5 assists against 3.0 turnovers last season). Missi may not have envisioned needing a scenery change so soon, but he never could’ve pictured the Pels overloading their roster at his position like this, either.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This might catch some folks off guard, because Missi’s rookie season shattered expectations in terms of both his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":91304,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":["post-91303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91303\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}