Pelicans 2026-27: 58% Paint Shots and the Trap Named Zion Williamson

Chicago, 7:40 p.m., a cold October evening arriving early. I sit in a small studio on the outskirts of the city, the crowd noise still humming in my headphones, and the screen is frozen on a possession I have watched at least a dozen times.

Zion Williamson catches the ball at the left elbow. He lowers his center of gravity, turns, and immediately two defenders collapse on him like doors slammed by wind. The ball is kicked to the right corner for Herbert Jones. Jones stands there, alone, in space so wide I can read the advertisement boards behind him. He hesitates. He does not shoot. He takes one dribble back, drives into the middle, and finishes with a wild, off-line release while three bodies stand in front of him.

I have called 22 NBA Finals on live broadcast. I have sat in arenas where the squeak of shoes sounds like a whole city breathing. And I learned one thing: a team's biggest failures are never on the scoreboard. They live in moments of hesitation that everyone misses. Jones's hesitation in the right corner was one of them.

Because there is a structure behind it. The New Orleans Pelicans led the entire league last season with 58% of their shots coming from the paint, according to data published by NBA.com and analyst John Schuhmann, figures that still warrant independent verification before being treated as absolute. That number says this team chose a path completely apart from the modern NBA's spacing trend. And the team's paint field-goal percentage was just 55.4%, second-worst in the league.

That is the entire story of the coming season, compressed into two lines of data.

Entering the 2026-27 campaign, the Pelicans have a new front office with Joe Dumars as team president and a new head coach in Jamahl Mosley, who left the Orlando Magic for the hardest job in the Western Conference. The roster Mosley inherits includes Zion Williamson, Dejounte Murray, Trey Murphy III, Herbert Jones, Bennedict Mathurin, Jordan Poole, Trendon Watford, AJ Johnson, Jaron Pierre Jr., a promising second-year pair in Jeremiah Fears and Derik Queen, and rotation pieces such as Micah Peavy.

On paper, that is depth. But I do not trust paper. I trust how a roster moves when the ball is nowhere near it. Forty-four years in this trade taught me that a roster sells tickets, while the gaps between the lines win games.

Start at the sorest spot.

Zion Williamson remains this team's only trustworthy efficiency engine. He took 791 paint attempts last season, third in the league by volume, and converted 60.3% of them — above the league average of 57.8% and his best mark in three years. For a player with his mass, length, and touch near the rim, that is an elite interior profile.

But read the rest of the data, and I start hearing the crack.

If the team shoots 55.4% in the paint while the league averages 57.8%, where does that gap come from? It cannot come from Zion, who shoots over 60%. It comes from everyone else. I did the simple math in my notebook: a paint attempt is worth two points. At 55.4%, each attempt yields 1.108 expected points. At the league average of 57.8%, each attempt yields 1.156. A gap of 0.048 points per attempt sounds trivial — until you multiply it by roughly fifty paint attempts a game. The Pelicans are voluntarily throwing away two to two-and-a-half points per night simply by delivering the ball to the wrong people in the wrong places.

Across an 82-game season, that is a gap that never closes.

This is where I prefer to dissect the system instead of worshipping individuals. The obvious take says the Pelicans need Zion healthy. True, but shallow. The real tactical problem lives in borderline paint attempts by wings like Herbert Jones, Micah Peavy, and Bennedict Mathurin. Those are not forced shots. They are chosen shots. They are the product of a system misreading space: sensing the ball leave Zion's hands, seeing an open rim ahead, and driving instead of relocating.

Herbert Jones has shot 31% from three over the last two seasons. For a player built on the 3-and-D archetype, that is a serious fracture in the profile. Bennedict Mathurin, brought in as a wing scorer, owns a career paint field-goal rate of just 51.5% — below the threshold a high-volume wing needs to justify the attempts.

Put those two pieces together and the whole mechanism appears: the league's most paint-dependent offense, staffed by too many below-standard paint finishers. This is an offense designed to optimize one man, then operated by men who are not good enough to run it.

For three years we chased a three-pointer that looked unprotected, only to find the thing we were chasing was the silence in the middle of the paint — where the ball passes through and nobody notices it has already gone.

The other side of the floor is no kinder. The Pelicans have finished in the bottom ten defensively two seasons running. Mosley arrives from an Orlando team where he built a defensive culture on switchable wings and a trustworthy rim protector. Leaving Orlando for New Orleans, he inherits a roster that does not yet have either.

That is a project about system and culture, not a tactical patch installed in one training camp. I have watched too many good coaches ground to dust after inheriting rosters that did not match their ideas, then judged by standings instead of by the time they needed to plant a system in a locker room.

The West will not wait this year. The Thunder remain a machine that ships pre-programmed. The Spurs have a vertical axis that forces every defense to choose between two kinds of pain. The Timberwolves, with Anthony Edwards, are a psychological exam every night. The Grizzlies, with Ja Morant, can detonate in any quarter. Out East, the Magic of Franz Wagner and Paolo Banchero, the Pacers of Tyrese Haliburton, the Pistons, the Trail Blazers — every opponent is a different question Mosley must answer.

People see the Thunder win; I see someone half-asleep on the other side of the floor. And this time, the one who is half-asleep may be the Pelicans in the first quarter of a game they do not understand losing.

Now comes my favorite part: the part where I argue against myself.

The obvious take everyone will write is that the Pelicans need more shooters. I think that is a lazy conclusion. You do not fix a spacing-starved offense by adding another spot-up shooter; you fix it by cutting bad shots. If the Pelicans simply reduce low-quality paint attempts from the wings and convert them into threes or trips to the free-throw line, the offense could improve materially without a single blockbuster personnel move.

Where could I be wrong? My dataset has no detailed defensive rating, no three-point volume, no pick-and-roll frequency, and no on/off or EPM data at all. I am reading one corner of the map and inferring the whole terrain. That is how a field reporter operates, and it is also the fastest way to get caught.

One more thing keeps me awake. The late-game plan appears to revolve around Murphy, Zion, Murray, and Mathurin — four players who all need the ball in their hands during the stretch when only one ball exists. Four egos demanding one rare seat rarely produce a system; they produce four independent decisions in the final seven seconds.

And here I see a ghost. Every giant's failure is a slap at those who collect names instead of collecting people. New Orleans spent years walking that road: acquiring names, stacking them, and hoping talent would discover its own shape. A $60 million player does not necessarily create more separation than a timid kid from the academy who knows how to watch — who understands that standing in the corner and not shooting is also a tactical decision.

On the other hand, there is a light I refuse to ignore. Jeremiah Fears and Derik Queen are rising second-year players entering the phase where young talent often leaps in game awareness. If either claims a rotation spot and brings reliable three-point shooting, the pressure on Zion in the paint drops sharply. That is the cheapest path to spacing, and the staff should test it before dialing anyone at the trade deadline.

This season I will track four verifiable things.

One: if the Pelicans keep their paint-shot rate at 58% or higher, I predict a bottom-eight offensive rating. This style was never built to survive packed playoff defenses.

Two: if they cut eight to ten low-quality paint attempts per game and convert them into threes or free throws, a top-six seed window opens immediately.

Three: Mosley's defense must reach the top fifteen before the All-Star break. If it does not, Joe Dumars's project starts drawing hard questions before it ever takes shape.

Four: Mathurin's paint minutes are the clearest indicator of whether the staff has correctly diagnosed the problem.

I write these lines before the season begins, and I know I am staking my reputation on a team everyone is used to judging by the scoreboard rather than by how they leave the floor. I once sat in a beer hall in Kazan, listening to Korean colleagues laugh when I said Germany had lost before the first ball was kicked, and that people simply had not been sharp-eyed enough to see it. Three days later, the whole world saw it in a scoreline they could not argue with.

New Orleans is not Germany. But the trap is structurally identical: a system misreading itself, and a crowd trusting the roster instead of the rhythm.

The question I want to leave behind is not for the coaching staff. It is for the people in the stands and on the forums: when Zion Williamson lowers his center of gravity at the left elbow and two defenders collapse, will you watch the ball — or will you watch the man in the right corner hesitating, the one deciding this game, night after night, without ever appearing on the scoreboard?