New Orleans Pelicans: The Case For Keeping Alvin Gentry

In the two seasons since head coach Alvin Gentry was hired to take the New Orleans Pelicans to the next level, he has failed to get them into the playoffs and is now reportedly on the hot seat. Here’s my case for why he deserves a third season.

From the moment the New Orleans Pelicans acquired DeMarcus Cousins, the ultimatum was seemingly set for head coach Alvin Gentry: Make the playoffs, or find yourself unemployed.

With only 10 games remaining in the season, the Pelicans are still five games out of the eighth and final playoff spot in the Western Conference. And despite the fact that the Pelicans will still play the Denver Nuggets (who currently hold the 8-seed) three times over the course of those final 10 games, New Orleans’ playoff hopes this season look dim at best.

Recently, there have been reports that the New Orleans front office is indeed contemplating a move at head coach and possibly GM. The playoff-or-bust scenario unquestionably plays a factor in the decision of whether or not to keep Gentry, but there at least seems to be some room for Gentry to change the minds of the Pelican’s decision makers.

As the report from Sporting News’ Sean Deveney states, the team will need to show “significant progress” down the stretch in order for Gentry to at least have a chance at saving his job — even if it’s only a small one.

New Orleans has now gone 7-8 since the All-Star break and the trade that unprecedentedly brought two All-NBA big men together in Cousins and Antony Davis.

However, after starting the post All-Star break portion of the season 2-6, the team has been rolling of late, with a 5-2 record in its last seven games.

No, the Pelicans will not make the playoffs this year. But I think they’ve shown enough progress in the short amount of time since the trade went down to realistically consider keeping Gentry on next year and perhaps even longer.

Now, I won’t sit here and pretend like the Pelicans have been anything but disappointing this season.

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Pelican Debrief

With the loss to the Houston Rockets on Friday, the Pelicans clinched their second straight losing season since Alvin Gentry assumed leadership of the team with 42 losses and only 30 wins on the season thus far.

The mark of a good coach is usually measured by wins and losses – and rightly so. For the Pelicans this season, wins have come too few and too far in between.

Not to mention, for an offensive guru, Gentry’s Pelicans have been terrible on the offensive end for most of the season. The Pelicans are currently are a bottom-10 team in terms of scoring and are 27th in offensive efficiency at 102.4.

Still, I don’t believe firing head coach Alvin Gentry is the right move.

Yes, the team has struggled to meet expectations this season. And yes, the offense has mostly underperformed under Gentry’s watch. However, when evaluating a coach, I believe many factors come into play.

First, this was not a team built for success. Coming into the season, the Pelicans’ roster was one made up of unproven players, journeymen and mediocre role players asked to take on a bigger role than they would have on a more established team.

A year after giving Omer Asik a five-year, $58 million contract (one that they’re now desperately trying to get rid of), Solomon Hill was given a four-year, $48 million contract after three years in Indiana as a role player whose job was to come off the bench and provide defense for the Pacers.

Buddy Hield (a player I really like) was drafted sixth overall and was thrust into the starting lineup a little over a month into the season — perhaps before he was ready to take on that burden.

E’Twaun Moore and Tim Frazier were brought in this past offseason after bouncing around the league a bit. Role players like Langston Galloway and Terrence Jones were also added into a rotation of players already consisting of Tyreke Evans, the aforementioned Asik, Dante Cunningham and Alexis Ajinca.

Oh and did I mention, with the announcement that starting point guard Jrue Holiday would understandably miss the beginning of the season, Lance Stephenson was signed a little more than 20 days prior to opening day with the intent of playing heavy minutes off the bench in his first nine games with the team?

New Orleans Pelicans

These were the guys that New Orleans decided to exhaust their salary cap space on and surround Anthony Davis with in hopes of reaching the getting to the next level.

Now to be fair, Hill, Moore, Frazier and Ajinca are good role players to have on a team that allows them to stay in their lane. But on a team that has a deficiency in talent, as the Pelicans do, these guys are asked to take on bigger assignments than they normally would or should.

If coach Gentry is the chef of this organization, then the person (Dell Demps) doing the grocery shopping has been settling for knock-off ingredients in hopes of passing them off as premium goods, only to find out during dinner time (the games) that there’s a noticeable difference in quality and taste (wins/losses).

Secondly, because of injury, trades or just bad performance, the Pelicans have had too many guys in and out of the lineup this season to maintain any consistency or cohesiveness. New Orleans has started 25 different lineup on the season — which is only behind the Brooklyn Nets (27), Denver Nuggets (29) and Philadelphia 76ers (28) for most starting lineups in the NBA this season.

The Pelicans lost the first eight games of the NBA season. They didn’t get their first win until Nov. 10 and seemingly started to pick up some momentum when starting point guard Jrue Holiday made his return against the Portland Trail Blazers on Nov. 18, helping the Pelicans win four in a row.

However, the losses returned and the wins were, again, too few and far in between.

Despite the lack of talent and availability, the players Gentry did have at his disposal gave him maximum effort when on the floor.

Alvin Gentry’s fast paced system has the Pelicans ranked as one of the higher paced teams in the league at a little over 100 possesion per game. However, they also boast one of the better defensive units with a rating of 104.2 — good enough for seventh in the league.

Per NBA.com, when it comes to hustle stats, the Pelicans rank just outside the top 10 in deflections, loose ball recovered and charges drawn, while ranking fifth in contested shots.

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To me, wins and losses are the most important stat when evaluating a head coach. But as I previously stated, many factors should also come into play during an evaluation.

I think it’s just as valuable to take into account not only how effective the system is that the coach is trying to instill in his players, but how well he can translate instruction and get his players to execute the game plan. Regardless of talent, Alvin Gentry has been able to do this. The wins haven’t come this season as the team had hoped, but the effort has been there.

Alvin Genty now has the team seemingly on the right path after that 2-6 start post-All-Star break. His team is playing on one accord defensively. In a short time, he has effectively reconstructed his offense to include DeMarcus Cousins into the lineup in a cohesive fashion to pair with Anthony Davis. His ever-revolving bench is playing as well as anyone in the league and his team is starting to win games in big fashion down the stretch.

Coach Gentry was given a difficult task in trying to turn a below-average roster into a playoff one – and nearly pulled it off. The wins weren’t there this season, but improvement was.

The New Orleans Pelicans made a mistake firing Monty Williams two years ago. They wanted to bring in a coach who could take the team to the next level. Then failed to do their job in bringing in the players to help their new coach get to that level. And now they want to double down on their ineptitude by firing Gentry as head coach.

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Now that the right pieces are finally starting to fall in place, in my opinion, the New Orleans Pelicans would be best served to bring Alvin Gentry back to do what he was hired to do — take the Pelicans to the next level.