National Basketball Association

Omer Asik's Role With New Orleans Pelicans Becoming A Huge Question Mark

Published Jun. 30, 2017 6:28 p.m. ET

foxsports

With the New Orleans Pelicans’ roster moves focusing on running more small-ball lineups, the future of Omer Asik’s role on the team is a massive question mark.

Life has become difficult for Omer Asik on the New Orleans Pelicans.

In his third season in New Orleans, the role of Omer Asik is becoming a massive question mark. With the recent acquisitions of players like Lance Stephenson, Solomon Hill and E’Twaun Moore, the Pelicans seems set on playing more small-ball lineups.

Those lineups will not include Omer Asik. His role will begin to decrease, even more than it has already in two years. Since the 2014-2015 season, Asik’s role has already taken major hits.

In his first season with New Orleans, Omer averaged 7.3 points and 9.8 rebounds per game, with an average of 26 minutes on the floor. Those numbers helped him earn a hefty raise.

However, his performance drastically fell off since then. No matter the raise, his minutes plummeted, along with the effect he had on games. In the 2015-2016 season, Asik averaged 9 minutes, 3.3 points and 3.7 rebounds less than he did a year prior.

Simply put, the Pelicans are going away from Omer Asik. Yet with the massive contract he has, the role he’ll have in the long-term future is becoming a bigger question mark as time passes.

It’s clear Alvin Gentry wants to run a good portion of offenses without a slow, sub-par scoring big inside. It never fit any of his teams prior and doesn’t seem to fit this one either. Still, New Orleans has to play him in some way.

One of the team’s biggest problems last year was rebounding, where they finished 22nd in 2015-2016. That is something Asik could help with. The problem is that’s the ONLY thing he really helps this team achieve. He can play some strong inside defense, however teams like the Golden State Warriors and Boston Celtics have embraced the small-ball strategy so strongly, Asik becomes completely ineffective against those teams.

That’s a major problem if he’s a key cog to the puzzle.

It’s becomes a balancing act for the New Orleans Pelicans. How much time playing Asik is too little time? What about playing him too much? Where’s the balance? It becomes extremely tricky, yet if this team wants to make the leap to contender before Anthony Davis‘ contract is up, they need to find out what to do with Asik….and soon.

The New Orleans Pelicans have a major decision to make with Omer Asik. It’s likely they will not be able to dump him in a trade, so they need to decide what role he’ll play in the team’s future. Being able to integrate hi smoothly and giving him just enough minutes to have success is massive. How many minutes the Pelicans decide on will have to be seen.