Pelicans falling behind in NBA arms race

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In the NBA, prosperity comes in two forms.

Of course, teams want to be at the top, breathing that rarified air that teams like the Golden State Warriors, Cleveland Cavaliers and San Antonio Spurs breath.

Only four or five teams ever sniff this spot on the mountain in a given year. Right now, I’d put the three teams mentioned above on that perch, while also giving a little love to the Houston Rockets, Boston Celtics and maybe the Oklahoma City Thunder.

But getting to the top is hard, which is why so few teams ever make it there.

It requires multiple star players who are versatile, a coach capable of getting the most out of said players, a system conducive to success in the modern game and, quite frankly, a little bit of luck on the injury front.

It’s an exclusive club to join because there are not enough resources in the world to feed everyone in the basketball world, so to speak.

What I mean is that there are only 10-12 truly World Class players and most of them are spoken for. It’s easy to see what the Warriors do. But without Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant to carry that scheme onto the floor, it won’t work quite as well.

So what happens if you’re not one of the elites? How does one ascend and get there?

Well, in the NBA, that blueprint is a little backwards from what one might think.

In other sports, the path to the top is by steady growth. One begins on the bottom, progresses to the middle, then reaches the top.

But in the NBA, it’s different.

To get to the top, one has to be the best at being bad – if that makes any sense.

And if stuck in the middle, then you’re like the New Orleans Pelicans – a team without a path for prosperity in the future.

The Pelicans are the most frustrating team in the NBA.

They have just enough talent to be interesting. But outside of a few top-tier talents, the team’s roster is a vast wasteland of bad contracts and fluff, which has the team buried in mediocrity for the foreseeable future – the absolute worst place to be in the league.

I have no clue how Dell Demps is still employed in New Orleans.

In the past few offseasons, Demps has slaughtered the Pelicans’ future and has made Anthony Davis’ future departure a very, very real scenario.

In 2015, Demps inexplicably re-signed Omer Asik to a five-year, $60-million deal – a contract which fans bickered about immediately because of Asik’s limited skill set.

The naysayers were right. Asik has largely been a non-factor. His contract is easily one of the worst in the entire NBA. He hasn’t been healthy and even when he is, he doesn’t do nearly enough to warrant that much cash.

But it gets worse.

A few days after the Asik team, the team doubled down on its ineptitude, inking Alexis Ajinca to a multi-year deal worth more than $20 million.

Neither Asik nor Ajinca are worth the cash. They’re so bad that they’re practically untradeable. Together, they eat up more than $16 million per year of the team’s salary cap without giving the team anything on the floor.

But it gets worse.

Even with the bad contracts on the books, the Pelicans had a little bit of salary cap space last offseason, which could have been used to turn the team from a pretender into a near-contender.

Guess what happened?

Predictably, Demps swung and missed again, whiffing on Solomon Hill and E’Twaun Moore – committing $20 million per season to the duo, making them the newest bad contracts on a payroll filled with them.

Hill and Moore are decent players. They’re nowhere near as bad as Asik and Ajinca.

But they’re not worth what they’re paid. They’ve not moved the meter for the Pelicans at all.

So flash forward to the present and the Pelicans are still stuck in the middle of the pack without much room for growth.

Sure, Demps worked a trade to get DeMarcus Cousins at the trade deadline last season but the on-court fit between Cousins and Davis has been awkward – at best, mostly because of the lack of support the team has from role players to make it work.

The team signed Jrue Holiday to a big-money deal a few days ago, but even that was a little awkward, in part because they didn’t have any other choice.

If they would have let Holiday walk, the team wouldn’t have had the cap space to get a worthwhile replacement – the problem with having so many bad contracts on the books.

And aside from Holiday, the Pelicans have done next to nothing else to get better, which is frustrating beyond belief.