Deleted Dejounte Murray Post Raises Eyebrows As Pelicans Struggles Continue

The New Orleans Pelicans have had a problem bubbling for a while now, and it seems to have reached its boiling point on Wednesday night.

The Pelicans lost 145-111 to the Brooklyn Nets. It was an embarrassing loss; there's no other way to phrase it. The morale of the team has taken a major hit since their four-game win streak.

One player who has been the focus of both fan and analyst criticism so far this year is Dejounte Murray. The guard had five points in 28 minutes and finished with a -33 against the Nets. That performance brought more complaints, and Murray actually had quite the revealing reaction to one in particular, making a post on X before quickly deleting it.

NBA aggregation account @TheDunkCentral (NBACentral) posted the following on X: 

The Pelicans’ record with Dejounte Murray this season: 1-8

The Pelicans’ record without Dejounte Murray: 3-0

Murray was a team-worst -33 tonight in a blowout loss at home to the 2-8 Brooklyn Nets

Murray then responded to that with 14 laughing emojis with this message:

"From what's going on INSIDE This sounds like someone hit you to say this!! THE "SABOTAGE" IS REAL!!!!!!"

Now, there is no point in guessing exactly what he meant with this message, in terms of who is trying to "sabotage" him, but the optics of this post are quite bad no matter what. There has already been plenty of speculation about Murray not being happy on the team, and this will only add fuel to the fire.

To this point, it has certainly been viewed as the player trying to drive the wedge between himself and the team even further. Even if it wasn't the intent, that will likely be the result. There isn't really any positive spin to take on this.

New Orleans has had a culture problem for the past couple of years, and that is what Jamahl Mosley was brought in to fix in that locker room. 

Over the past four outings, on 27.3 minutes a game, Murray has posted just 7.5 points, 2.5 rebounds and 3.0 assists on 33.3/44.4/80.0 shooting splits. That type of production, paired with the now off-the-court stuff, is not going to help the Pelicans get back into the win column.

It will be important to see how this gets handled. Perhaps there is no change and no real response is made, which will be just as interesting as if there is a follow-up.