Birds on a Wire: The Exciting, Uneasy Future of the New Orleans Pelicans

Some team has to start the season by playing the defending champions, and the New Orleans Pelicans will receive that dubious honor on Tuesday night. It is just one game in a nine-month campaign, and will mean only that much. The Pelicans' season may not end where the Warriors' did last year, but it's saying something—about how good this team could be, about how far they could go by climbing onto Anthony Davis's increasingly bulky shoulders—that the Pelicans and their fans can now dream that big.

Because it could happen. Anything could. Davis is the kind of otherworldly, do-it-all star who makes any goal seem if not attainable, at least reasonable.

Of course, that is not just on Davis, although he is at the center of everything the Pelicans are trying to do. They'll need the rest of their roster to stay healthy—which, after the news of Tyreke Evans's injury last week, seems like an increasingly big ask. They'll need Alvin Gentry's new up-tempo offense to succeed and, more important, new assistant Darren Erman's new defense to hold up. They'll need Quincy Pondexter to start making three-pointers again, and it wouldn't hurt if someone could break whatever curse has turned Omer Asik's hands to stone. But, in the end, it is Davis and only Davis who puts notions of playoff success realistically into play here. As long as he is on the roster, his very presence means that there is no dream, up to and including championship contention, too big.

Davis re-upped this summer for a staggering five years and $145 million. He clearly has every intention of being a New Orleans Pelican for the foreseeable future, but intentions are Wes Bentley's stupid plastic bag blowing around on the sidewalk—fluid, malleable, nice to think about, and strictly speaking more garbage than anything else. The Pelicans, and the rest of the league, watched the Minnesota Timberwolves get sucked into an ugly situation with Kevin Love. Some 577 miles to their Northwest, the Oklahoma City Thunder are doing this dance right now with Kevin Durant. Hell, the Pelicans have already lost a similar battle with the former heir to their organizational legacy, Chris Paul. When a star player loses faith in his team, there is no coming back from it. The biggest challenge for the Pelicans this season is to win enough games to keep Davis interested and invested—to catch every last piece of straw, lest one unexpectedly break the camel's back.

Davis brings wins and highlights and fun and hope, but also a pressure that's strange and hard to define. He's the kind of player every franchise dreams about lucking into, which makes the possibility of losing him that much more crushing. Every win, by those lights, is also another bullet dodged. Every loss is another reminder that the team's future is only as secure as its ability to satisfy Davis's desire to contend and to sustain his belief that he can do so in New Orleans. If the Pelicans somehow lose hold of his imagination, the punishment will be a sullen, frustrated star, and the corrosive effect of endless rumormongering and trade hypotheticals. Picture Zombie LeBron at the end of his first stint in Cleveland, but with more prominent eyebrows. By that time, the only move is trading a dollar for a sticky dime and five filthy nickels, then beginning a rebuild while Davis works his magic somewhere else.

It's fitting that the Warriors are the first task on the Pelicans' quest to get closer to winning it all rather than losing it all. Golden State has already walked this star-pleasing tightrope; they are now, somewhat obnoxiously, high-fiving each other on the other side. They have lessons to offer New Orleans: find the right coach; be flexible with style; don't be afraid to let your star fully inhabit his uniqueness. They also offer a mirror, reflecting on some poor and unfixable choices. Davis is the only player on the Pelicans roster who was drafted by New Orleans; everyone else was acquired through free agency or trade. For a roster that was built by acquiring mostly known entities, they have a surprisingly odd fit. The Warriors, on the other hand, are—with a few accommodating veteran exceptions—mostly drafted talent who have grown together.

Most important, Golden State is a reminder that luck is one of the most powerful forces in the NBA. While the Pelicans rotation has often become a triage center, the Warriors have strung together two remarkably healthy seasons. Every team is better when their good players can play. That's a hurdle that keeps sending the Pelicans sprawling, and which the Warriors clipped regularly during Stephen Curry's unlucky early career.

Organizationally, the most basic challenge for the Pelicans this season is forward motion—maybe not to follow the Warriors exactly but at least to trace some of their steps. New systems, preached by optimistic new voices; a superstar still growing into his immense talent; a supporting cast that might not make sense until the context changes around them. Wrap the whole thing in some luck—and some help from the miracles of modern medicine—and the Pelicans might have a real chance at reaching the NBA's highest heights. Until then, they're playing basketball on a high wire. The key is to look forward, and to never look down.