Marc Stein notes on Willie and Z, Griff likely let go due to wanting to fire Willie

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The Pelicans' process that landed on Dumars to take over their front office has garnered its own considerable share of scrutiny leaguewide. New Orleans named Dumars to the exact title of his predecessor, former Pelicans executive vice president of basketball operations David Griffin, within 24 hours of Griffin's exit. Pelicans owner Gayle Benson seemed to acknowledge the criticism in her statement about Dumars' hire, insisting that the decision "was not hastily made and not without spending valuable time talking to players, coaches and league officials."

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The writing was likely on the wall for Griffin's tenure, league sources say, once he presented ownership with the plan earlier this season to move on from Green in favor of associate head coach James Borrego. Sources say Griffin was denied by Benson, illustrating as loudly as ever how much support Green has from Pelicans ownership.

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People were fine with Griff going but Green going was seen as an inevitability.

Apparently not so much.

Griffin 100% had to go, but Willie deserved to be fired even more so than Griffin, yet Gayle is the only one stupid enough to keep Willie for no mother fricking reason at all. Literally no reason at all. Mother fricking JOKE of a franchise.

Griff hired Willie no way I would have let Griff hire another coach 3 strikes and your out. Let Dumars decide if he wants Willie to stay

Griff hired SVG. When that failed, Griff was told to accept other input into the hiring process, and the hiring of Willie was more of a group project.

The sad thing is that SVG largely failed because of the COVID season and because he was a hard-arse and BI hated that. But SVG was a very good coach for Zion, and whatever else you want to say about him, Zion has the raw basketball talent to lead a contending team, and BI does not. Willie is a "player's coach," and that would be OK if we had someone on the team like Draymond Green who would be the bad cop, but we don't. There's no accountability, and there won't be.

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e. Roster is decent enough to be competitive.

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It’s really not, sure there is some talent, but none of the pieces really fit together for any cohesive style of play. It’s a Frankenstein roster with the main guy hardly ever available.

Fans are going to eat this shite up, even though it’s clearly Griff leaking stuff to Stein in an attempt to wash of his hands of the disaster that is the Pelicans’ current state. And as he should, because the dude wants a job.

But Griff is just as culpable as Willie and Zion for our problems , if not more so.

It won't really matter who's the coach anymore. Once they get rid of Williamson, they don't have to make a BI/Z combo work if they both are gone.

The team won't have enough talent to compete in the West. They'll turn into Brooklyn West.

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So one has to go? Willie or Griff? Who you pick? You can’t sit on the fence.

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Why is it one or the other?

Neither are any good at their jobs. But I guess if we’re playing this weird “you choose” game, there’s a better chance for real change if you fire the POBO than the head coach, who in a lot of ways, is just a mouthpiece for the POBO.

With that said, we ruined any chance of real forward thinking change by bringing in an out of touch dinosaur to replace Griffin.

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Why is it one or the other?

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Because that was the hypothetical. Just to be clear, I want both gone and a competent GM. Looks like I didn’t get any of that shite.

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won't really matter who's the coach anymore. Once they get rid of Williamson, they don't have to make a BI/Z combo work if they both are gone.

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To me it sounds like dumas wants a yr to "try" and work on zion.