Pelicans predictions: How DeMarcus Cousins trade affects team’s playoff hunt
Our NBA experts weigh in on whether New Orleans can make the playoffs
By
CBS Sports Staff
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4 min read
The dust is still settling on the trade that rocked NBA All-Star Weekend, and people are still trying to make sense of what happened. One of the immediate questions is how DeMarcus Cousins will affect the playoff race for the Pelicans, who are currently 2.5 games behind the Nuggets for the final Western Conference playoff spot.
Our NBA experts weighed in on the Pelicansâ immediate future now that Cousins is teamed up with Anthony Davis:
Bill Reiter
With two of the leagueâs top-five scorers and the best big-man combo since Tim Duncan and David Robinson, New Orleans will surge after the All-Star break and easily claim the eighth spot. Some are saying the playoffs are a longshot, and to be fair, New Orleans is 2.5 games back with 25 games remaining and three teams to jump. But those three teams are the Nuggets, Blazers and, yes, the Kings. The talent gap that Davis and Cousins represent on their own is too much for any of those teams to match.
Of course, the No. 8 seed is no playoff picnic. The Pelicans will get the Warriors in the first round. My prediction is theyâll play tough, lose in five, but most importantly, show the league theyâre coming.
Matt Moore
The Pelicans are mathematically too far back to catch the Thunder for seventh seed. If OKC was to go one game over .500 the rest of the way at 13-12, the Pelicans would have to go 23-2 to catch them. That ship has sailed. So the question is going to be whether they can secure the eighth seed. On talent alone, they should. Bear in mind that the Pelicans have one of the better defensive marks of the teams competing. They needed offense. They have it. Thereâs a chance this doesnât work, and it could take time. Thereâs also Anthony Davisâ injury proclivity. There are a lot of ways this can go sideways. But look -- no team is in the position New Orleans is in, with this kind of talent. They secure the eighth seed, win Game 3, Cousins gets ejected and suspended for Game 4, and weâre on our way with the Boogie-Brow era.
James Herbert
Long-term, Iâm as excited about Boogie and Brow as anybody, but Iâm not ready to pencil the Pelicans in for a playoff spot this season. Theyâre three games behind the Denver Nuggets in the loss column with just 25 games to go. Denverâs offense has been awesome lately, and the Pelicansâ roster is so unbalanced now that they might have to play stretch-fours like Solomon Hill and Omri Casspi at shooting guard. They lost their first game to Denver on opening night, and their three remaining matchups -- on March 26, April 4 and April 7 -- will essentially be playoff games. I see this as a tight race, and Iâll take the Nuggets as long as they donât dump talent before Thursdayâs trade deadline.
Ananth Pandian
While the Pelicans are the clear winners in the this trade, this isnât going to automatically shoot them into the playoffs. New Orleans had ancillary perimeter talent around Davis to start with and that is weakened a bit by trading for Cousins. Still, the pairing of Cousins and Davis should be enough for the Pelicans to secure the eighth seed, which is up for grabs. And who knows, with the trade deadline still a few days away, the Pelicans might not be done dealing. Of course once they get into the playoffs the Pelicans will face the Warriors, who despite being thin on big men will not have a problem with New Orleans, which will lose in five in the first round and start looking to next year.
Howard Megdal
The trade is an easy win for the Pelicans, but letâs not lose sight of the short-term issue it created for New Orleans: the 27th-ranked offense in the league just jettisoned its two best 3-point shooters in Buddy Hield and Langston Galloway. There are combinations that will make sense around Davis and Cousins, and adding two superstars is the far harder task, but expect some early crowding and growing pains. Chances are good that the Pelicans can win the eighth spot simply by virtue of the handful of games each of their two superstars will decide to go win themselves. But thatâs not a recipe for any kind of playoff success, not this year, anyway. Expect a first-round sweep to follow.
Stephen Oh, SportsLine data engineer
The per game impact of this trade the rest of the season is pretty substantial -- close to two extra wins for the Pelicans if you looks at the projections below (yes, that qualifies as substantial in this time frame) -- but with under a third of the regular season to go, the impact, in terms of playoff percentage, is minimal.
Plus, Cousins may be the No. 1 fantasy center but heâs still a guy who shoots under 50 percent from 2-point range, turns it over a lot, and the Kings were better defensively when he was off the court. New Orleans is still a longshot to make the playoffs as they improve by 1.8 projected wins. Their 7.2 percent increase in per game win percentage the rest of the season is a very big impact of nearly 6 wins over a full season.
NEW ORLEANS | WINS | CONF RANK | PLAYOFF |
Before Trade | 31.8 | 12 | 1.3% |
After Trade | 33.6 | 11 | 6.7% |
IMPACT | 1.8 | 1 | 5.4% |
REST OF SEASON | WIN | LOSS | WIN% |
Before Trade | 8.8 | 16.2 | 35.3% |
After Trade | 10.6 | 14.4 | 42.6% |
IMPACT | 1.8 | -1.8 | 7.2% |
