The New Orleans Pelicans are deep into making sweeping changes to their organization, as first reported by Shamit Dua of In The No late last week. A growing number of employees have been notified, by email, that their contracts will not be renewed under Joe Dumars.
On Monday morning, Dua reported that there have been at least 25 vacancies created by this re-shuffling. Not all of those were firings, as some staff also left independently. Daniel Bove, for example, accepted a job with the Philadelphia Flyers.
Per Dua, it has been the medical and performance staffs whom have been hit the hardest by the changes, with seven total vacancies. It's not too shocking that Dumars and co. would want to make massive changes to that group, given the amount of injuries that the team has gone through over the past two years.
Changes were made and things got better as last season went along, most notably growth within Zion Williamson, but it wasn't enough to persuade the front office against a major shake-up.
The analytics department has also been "completely gutted,” which is not a surprise given Dumars’ past. It’ll be interesting to see how the franchise approaches analytics in this regime.
It’s clear that something needed to change, given the record of the last two years, but wide-sweeping changes like this is always going to ruffle some feathers.
A lot of these changes are going to be unseen by fans, but some aren’t. Erin Summers and Wesley Johnson, the hosts of the pre- and Post-game shows were both part of the group that got cut. That just goes to show how deep these changes are going. Only time will tell if it was worth it.