Bennedict Mathurin, the Indiana Pacers' sixth overall pick in the 2022 draft who was sent to the LA Clippers as part of the Ivica Zubac trade, has signed with the New Orleans Pelicans on a two year/16 million dollar deal. This move comes after Mathurin's representation asked the Clippers to rescind his eight-million-dollar qualifying offer that kept him as a restricted free agent.
For the Pelicans, this move is a simple upside gamble on a player who was good enough to go high in the draft just four years ago and who averaged over 17 points per contest last year.
While Mathurin won't change anything for a team that will surely be bad, this is their first real move of the offseason after they resigned Deandre Jordan and drafted SMU product Jaron Pierre Jr. with the 58th pick. New Orleans is likely destined to be one of the worst teams in the league.
While the immediate reaction is confusion as to why Mathurin would leave a young, scrappy Clippers team entering a retool around Darius Garland, Keaton Wagler, and whoever else could emerge from the scrap heap of second-draft options and young fringe players, this comes as no surprise to those who knew the Arizona product as a Pacer.
Maybe it was the trade of Kawhi Leonard for Brandon Ingram, Gradey Dick, and a handful of draft picks that scared him off. After all, Ingram will certainly be taking the starting spot at small forward. The Clippers have silently amassed more rotation-level wings than they can feasibly play.
However, the opportunity the Pelicans offer is simply too alluring for Mathurin, for all the wrong and right reasons.
A man who loves the ball in his hands
When the Pacers drafted Mathurin, their vision for him was as a complementary scorer that could capitalize on Tyrese Haliburton's playmaking while spending enough time off the ball to allow Haliburton room to operate.
What they got instead was a spark plug off the bench, unwilling or unable to do much except for score the basketball.
During the Pacers' 2024-25 run to the Finals, Mathurin was the only player outside of Haliburton and Pascal Siakam who could get his own shots to go. When the bench needed someone, anyone, to eat up scoring usage, he could do that.
Now, on the Pelicans, Mathurin will be expected to explore that scoring ability more. New Orleans will enable the Canadian forward to shoot, attack, and handle far more than he ever could have on the Pacers.
Lucky for Bennedict, bad teams need options as well. As the Pelicans spend their time in the lottery, their star signing will exist in a similar role to the one Rudy Gay once did for the Memphis Grizzlies and Sacramento Kings.
He will simply eat up usage, score 20 point a contest, and demand a raise afterwards, despite the lackluster impact he provides in those minutes.
However, that feels like quite the bitter take. The truth remains that the Pacers miss Mathurin's scoring and creation on the wings. The team could never have asked him to be this type of player in the ecosystem they were building, one of low individual usage, even for its stars.
Mathurin is not and will never be the complementary piece the Pacers envisioned him as, but his career still has much left to be written. The Pelicans offer the position and opportunity that he desires for himself.
The question of whether he or the Pacers were right about how he should be developed will be answered this season.
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