"That Organization's Cursed" - Former Pelican Dyson Daniels Had The Perfect Explanation Of What's Currently Going On In New Orleans
One of the best surprise stories of the first quarter of the NBA season so far has to be the play of Dyson Daniels. It's not like he didn't show flashes while he was on the Pelicans, but what he's done on both ends of the floor this year for the Hawks has been incredible.
At this point, you can pretty much write his name down for an All NBA Defensive spot in pen. That's the easiest lock of all locks (as long as he hits the games played threshold). You could also say he's a legit candidate for the Most Improved Award, bumping his scoring up from 5.8 points last year to 13.5 this year while leading the NBA in steals per game. The point is, he's thriving now that he's finally out of NO and has a legit full time role.
Why might that be you ask? Simple. Just let him explain it to you
“That organization's cursed. Every year there's something new. I’m happy I’m not there anymore…I had like four or five ankle injuries down there as well. There's something down in that water down there or something. They got hamstrings. They got knees. They got concussions and stuff as well. They get everything down there. I don’t know what it is. Playing hard I guess?”
You know what, I have to agree with Dyson Daniels here. The Pelicans are such an obvious case of being under the spell of an Injury Curse, I don't know how anyone could deny it. In fact, that's exactly what I said once the latest Brandon Ingram injury news came out.
It may sound silly, but it's really the only legitimate explanation for how their entire roster year after year gets decimated by injuries. This isn't just a Zion problem either, it's legit every main rotation player on the roster. Dejounte Murray starts the year by breaking his hand, Zion pulls a hammy a week into the year, CJ gets hurt again, Jose Alvarado goes down, Brandon Ingram suffers a significant ankle injury during a time when maybe the team would be looking to trade him, their All NBA defender Herb Jones gets hurt with what he describes as the longest he's had to sit out in his life
I don't care if you have the worst training staff in the history of the sport, you don't get all these types of injuries all at once unless there's some sort of curse at play.
At what point do you as an organization decide to do something about this? Bring in sage, bring in some priests to perform an exorcism or something. You can't go year after year allowing this to happen and then just chalking it up to bad injury luck. Someone out there has put a hex on the Pelicans and until they do something about it, nothing is going to change. Seasons will be lost, windows will be closed, and that'll be that. We're to believe it's just a coincidence that Daniels had to fight through all those injuries as a Pelican, then he gets traded away and now he's not only healthy, but he's playing the best basketball of his career?
I'm not sure how much clearer it could be that something is afoot here. At least it's nice to know that a player who has experienced this curse firsthand is giving credibility to this theory. It doesn't have to last forever, just look at what's going on with the Grizzlies. They had an injury curse last year and they figured it out this season while sitting pretty in the West. If the Pelicans want to get serious, it's time they do something about it as well.