The New Orleans Pelicans' G League affiliate just had a weird transaction roll through with forward Johnny O'Neil
The New Orleans Pelicans continue to figure out who’s going to be sitting up for the organization this season, across all levels. They seemed to have made a G League pickup on Wednesday.
Spotrac’s Keith Smith reported that the Pelicans had both signed and waived forward Johnny O’Neil, with the intention of adding him to the Laketown Squadron.
Here is the closest rule that explains why New Orleans might have done this, per the G League's FAQs:
NBA teams can designate up to four players that they cut during training camp as “affiliate players,” meaning those players will join that team’s NBA G League affiliate (should the players choose to sign into the NBA G League). These players are signed under contract with the league rather than the team, meaning they are technically free agents who can be called up to any of the 30 NBA teams.
So basically, this is a way for them to retain the G League rights for O'Neil without actually using up one of their spots on the floor for training camp, which begins in a few weeks. While not an exact match, as he was not cut DURING training camp, he is still likely to end up as one of those affiliate players.
O'Neil spent last year as a member of the Birmingham Squadron, so he'll just be making the move over to Laketown along with the team. Across 10 appearances last season, he put up 13.3 points, 4.1 rebounds and 2.1 assists per night on 50.6/47.5/81.8 shooting splits, along with 1.2 steals and 1.5 blocks per night on defense.
It doesn't take much thinking to understand why the team might at least want to keep him in the vicinity. That 47.5% from three was on 6.1 attempts per night and the steals plus blocks number of 2.7 suggests high defensive effort.
O'Neil was a career 43.3/37.2/65.4 split shooter from three over a larger sample size of five collegiate seasons, which is closer to why he wasn't drafted. He did receive an All-Conference defensive team nod, though, so that backs up a bit of what he did in the G League.
Overall, this likely won't have much of an impact on the Pelicans. It is an interesting wing talent to have across town, should they end up in a scenario like last season if they needed to have someone like Josh Oduro get promoted to a two-way deal.
