The New Orleans Pelicans have fired head coach Alvin Gentry, the team announced on Saturday. Gentry had one year left on his deal. The decision comes after the Pelicans finished the 2019-20 season with a 30-42 record, which included a disappointing 2-6 record in the NBA’s restart. Gentry went 175-225 in five seasons with the Pelicans.
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How we got here
Jeff Duncan, New Orleans columnist: Gentry ultimately was undone by a lack of success on the court — one playoff appearance — and an inability to generate enthusiasm in the fan base. The team’s dreadful 2-6 performance in Orlando was the proverbial nail in the coffin. Pelicans owner Gayle Benson and vice president of basketball operations David Griffin were left with no alternative than to move on. In doing so, the Pelicans are biting a significant financial bullet. Gentry was owed $5.4 million on the final year of his contract in 2020-2021 and the salaries of his staff will make it a roughly $9 million hit to the team’s bottom line. The move sends a message to the fan base that money will not stop ownership and management from doing what they feel is best for the team.
Sam Amick, national columnist: As coaching firings go, this one was uncomfortable. The now-departed Gentry had quite a bit of history with Griffin from their Phoenix Suns days, and Griffin would routinely highlight those warm and fuzzy memories at the start of his New Orleans tenure. But sources say Griffin soured on Gentry not long thereafter and was leaning this direction for quite some time. The bubble experience only sealed the deal.
Zach Harper, national columnist: The Pelicans played an extremely fast brand of basketball this season, but none of it was terribly efficient. They were bad in transition and bad in the half court. How much of that was due to injuries? How much of that was personnel? How much of that was their youth? Because before the shutdown, we definitely saw a change once Zion Williamson was injected into the lineup. The next coach has to figure out the hierarchy of this squad and building that from within. Is Brandon Ingram the top guy? Is Lonzo Ball the future point guard of this team? How do you maximize Zion? All the while, they have to figure out the basics of defense as a team. Someone like Ty Lue or Mark Jackson or Jason Kidd can help build the tenets of a good defense. Who brings this roster from a cool idea to a reckoning for the West?
The big picture
Will Guillory, Pelicans beat writer:In Gentry’s five-year stint with the Pelicans, he got to coach three of the most transcendent big men to hit the league in the past decade (Anthony Davis, DeMarcus Cousins and Williamson), another All-Star in Ingram and Jrue Holiday, one of the top two-way players in the NBA. Even with all the talent, the two things that’ll be remembered most from his tenure will be the unprecedented number of injuries and roster overturn he had to deal with and how much they influenced him failing to reach the postseason in four of his five seasons.
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What’s next?
Guillory:One of Griffin’s first duties after getting hired in New Orleans last year was to figure out where to trade arguably the greatest player in franchise history as he was pushing his way out the door. One year later, Griffin is faced with another franchise-altering decision as he tries to find the right voice to push his young group into the next stage of their development. There will surely be a line of coaches looking for an opportunity to work with a core led by Williamson and Ingram, but it’ll be on Griffin to hire someone who will bring out the enormous potential within Zion and give New Orleans something it hasn’t had since the Chris Paul era: a consistent playoff contender.
(Layne Murdoch Jr. / Getty Images)
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Will Guillory is a staff writer for The Athletic, covering the New Orleans Pelicans. Before joining The Athletic, he was a writer at The Times-Picayune/NOLA Media Group, and he's been on the Pelicans beat since 2016. He is a New Orleans native. Follow William on Twitter @WillGuillory
