{"id":34399,"date":"2020-10-21T14:56:12","date_gmt":"2020-10-21T18:56:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/?p=34399"},"modified":"2020-10-21T14:56:49","modified_gmt":"2020-10-21T18:56:49","slug":"new-orleans-pelicans-stan-van-gundy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2020\/10\/21\/new-orleans-pelicans-stan-van-gundy\/","title":{"rendered":"New Orleans Pelicans Hire Stan Van Gundy as Head Coach"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/category\/pelicans\/\" target=\"_self\">New Orleans Pelicans<\/a>\u00a0have hired Stan Van Gundy as their new head coach, according to ESPN&#8217;s Andrew Lopez and Adrian Wojnarowski. This will be Van Gundy&#8217;s fourth coaching stop in the NBA.<\/p>\n<h2>New Orleans Pelicans Hire Stan Van Gundy as New Head Coach<\/h2>\n<p>Teams that were coached by Van Gundy excelled defensively and this is an area where the Pelicans need to improve on. The Pelicans ranked <a href=\"https:\/\/www.teamrankings.com\/nba\/stat\/defensive-efficiency\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">17th<\/a> in defensive efficiency and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.teamrankings.com\/nba\/stat\/opponent-points-per-game\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">27th<\/a> in points allowed to opponents last season. In Van Gundy&#8217;s 11 seasons as the head coach, his teams finished top 10 in defensive rating in eight of those seasons. On top of that, the Pelicans were sold on his ability as a teacher with this young roster.<\/p>\n<p>Van Gundy has an extensive coaching background boasting a 523-384 record during the regular season. Furthermore, he has coached 91 playoff games and won 48 of them. Van Gundy&#8217;s best accomplishment in his coaching career is that he led the 2009 <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/category\/magic\/\" target=\"_self\">Orlando Magic<\/a> team into the Finals. That Magic team lost to the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/category\/lakers\/\" target=\"_self\">Los Angeles Lakers<\/a> in five games. This will be the first time he will the head coach since 2018 where he coached the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/category\/pistons\/\" target=\"_self\">Detroit Pistons<\/a>. Van Gundy served as a commentator for TNT for the last couple of years.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Pelicans were sold on SVG\u2019s abilities as a teacher with a young roster, his history of building top defensive teams and his vision for the roster in place. His personnel decisions in Detroit was a non-factor in search; he\u2019s coming to coach. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/XhWcUCIxKo\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">https:\/\/t.co\/XhWcUCIxKo<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/wojespn\/status\/1318977802864001024?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">October 21, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h3>The Future of the New Orleans Pelicans<\/h3>\n<p>The Pelicans have a strong young core led by <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/i\/ingrabr01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Brandon Ingram<\/a><\/strong> and <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/w\/willizi01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Zion Williamson<\/a><\/strong>. While they weren&#8217;t the most efficient team on offense, they were <a href=\"https:\/\/www.teamrankings.com\/nba\/stat\/points-per-game\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">fifth<\/a> in the NBA in points per game last season. They are very volatile on offense. The Pelicans were playing some excellent basketball after Williamson returned from injury. However, it wasn&#8217;t the same story during the restart.<\/p>\n<p>If the team can stay healthy next year, they are destined to have an excellent season with coach Van Gundy emphasizing defense. While the Pelicans don&#8217;t have many great individual defensive players, they should thrive in Van Gundy&#8217;s system.<\/p>\n<p>Main Photo:<br \/>\n<a id=\"av_jGvRHTaVoq0bCm2yRUA\" class=\"gie-single\" style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/525122158\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'av_jGvRHTaVoq0bCm2yRUA',sig:'p5JGmBSD2-hv_uokhwoC0w0rppsPZVfamhFFettlCjI=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'525122158',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The New Orleans Pelicans\u00a0have hired Stan Van Gundy as their new head coach, according to ESPN&#8217;s Andrew Lopez and Adrian Wojnarowski. This will be Van Gundy&#8217;s fourth coaching stop in the NBA. New Orleans Pelicans Hire Stan Van Gundy as New Head Coach Teams that were coached by Van Gundy excelled defensively and this is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3620,"featured_media":34404,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33,1608,62,3],"tags":[308,220,368,1684],"class_list":["post-34399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pelicans","category-basketball","category-nba","category-news","tag-brandon-ingram","tag-new-orleans-pelicans","tag-stan-van-gundy","tag-zion-williamson"],"modified_by":"Chase Gage","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3620"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34399\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}