[Old General Record] Eric Gordon and the Pelicans passed each other!

The protagonist of this article comes from Eric Gordon.

Eric Gordon, like his father's name, is always mentioned compared to his father because Gordon inherited his father's basketball talent. He has been growing up in Indiana, which is also his father's basketball enlightenment. Gordon was selected as a basketball player in high school. It was rumored that he was leaving Indiana to go to college, but in the end, Indiana University found a way to keep the shooter. The main reason was that the coach candidates of the university team were replaced at that time. The former coach Mike Davis was replaced with Kelvin Sampson. More importantly, he found Jeff Meyer as an assistant coach, and he was the coach of Old Gordon when he was a college student and was also a close friend of Gordon's family.

With this relationship, Eric Gordon was finally able to stay at Indiana University. Gordon did not disappoint the expectations of his hometown elders, averaging 20.9 points per game, leading the team as the top ten league division scoring champion to win 17 wins in the first 18 games of the season. Although the team eventually declined due to injury, the team eventually lost in the first round of the championship.

Gordon then chose to participate in the 2008 draft and was finally selected by the Clippers with the seventh pick in the first round.

For plug-and-play players like Gordon, the Clippers chose to trade the original starting shooting guard Coutino Mobley to the Knicks, and after Ricky Davis only won two starts, the starting scoring position was completely given to Eric Gordon. Since December of that year, Gordon has only scored in one of his 36 games but failed to double-digit scores, and even scored 41 points in the game against the Thunder in late January, breaking the highest scoring record of the Clippers rookie at that time, and the potential of the new generation of scorers has gradually begun to show.

All rookie season, Gordon averaged 16.1 points and 2.8 assists per game, missing the All-Rookie Team by only 5 points, and was finally selected for the All-Rookie Team second team with the highest score.

After standing firmly, Gordon began to shine, but the Clippers quickly fell into a downturn after a brief light in 2006, and it was not until 2011 that they had the opportunity to rise. The only regret is that Gordon's career has also reached a turning point.

New Orleans Hornets chose to sell because of their boss's problems in 2010. After a year, no one took over and was finally officially acquired by the league in December 2010. This made the team's situation more embarrassing. On the one hand, the league funds were originally maintained by other teams, which led to the Hornets' interfering in even making transactions. However, under the premise of finding the next buyer, they must maintain the team's appearance.

As time goes by, the players who are about to become free agents cannot sit idly by. The first thing that is to bear is the point guard Chris Paul, who performed well. For Paul, who was already the top point guard in the league at that time, it would definitely be a maximum salary market if he became a free agent, but the Hornets at that time obviously could not afford it, so trading became the only choice.

As we all know, the deal that might have been negotiated with the Lakers was eventually rejected by then NBA president Stern for basketball reasons, but it is rarely mentioned that the Clippers also negotiated the deal, and the chips they opened were Chris Carman, Aminu, and Bledsoe. The first round of 2012 was added, but they were eventually rejected by Stern. After finally changing Bledsoe to Gordon, Stern chose to nod and agreed.

Obviously, from Stern's perspective, compared with Bledsoe, having Gordon would make the Hornets look better, which also shows that Gordon had already been recognized by most teams in the league after his outstanding performance in the Clippers.

For the Clippers at that time, Griffin, who had just debuted, the first round pick from the Timberwolves in 2012, and Eric Gordon, this represents the team's future hope. But in the end, they had to endure the pain of sending Gordon out, because Clippers general manager and coach Mike Dunleavy once said in an interview that Gordon was a player they would not send away, but eventually chose to compromise, which led to Gordon's negative emotions at the beginning of the transaction. Even at the press conference for joining the Hornets, they left classic cold-faced photos with Carman and Aminu.

In any case, Gordon's New Orleans career began like this.

To be fair, the future that was originally highly valued in the Clippers, was not changed in New Orleans. Gordon scored 20 points in the opening game, helping the Hornets narrowly defeat the Suns to get a good start. However, he was hit by Grant Hill in the game, causing him to be affected by injuries throughout the season. In the end, he only played in 9 games, averaging 20.6 points and 3.4 assists per game in 9 games. He was still able to maintain the Clippers' skills, but his lower attendance became his biggest problem.

In the summer of 2012, Gordon became a restricted free agent. He had already accepted the Suns' quotation of 58 million in four years, but the Hornets still chose to follow up the offer and stay smoothly. In some aspects, this proves that Gordon did not have much sense of belonging to New Orleans at that time, but from another perspective, the Hornets, with large enough salary space at that time, really needed to recruit helpers for the new No. 1 pick Davis.

As a scorer, Gordon is not very tall, but his victory is due to his outstanding wingspan conditions, his shooting speed, and his explosive power above the qualified level prevents his offensive firepower from falling after entering the NBA. For the Hornets, who had no obvious offensive advantage, the team finally had a potential inside player, so naturally he was unwilling to give up a scorer partner with 20 points.

In fact, after Gordon completed his four-year contract in New Orleans, his average score in four years was 17 points, 15.4 points, 13.4 points and 15.2 points respectively. Considering that Davis has become the core main force of the team since the second year, it is acceptable for Gordon to lose this score.. But the real trouble is that Gordon's game number in the past four years is 42, 64, 61, and 45. He has missed 116 games in the past four years. Within the four-year contract, Gordon has suffered injuries such as cartilage, left knee tendon, left shoulder joint lip, and right hand fracture. The Pelicans have thought of using it as a team puzzle, but due to their injury history, they have never been able to piece together the complete lineup.

From Gordon's perspective, he actually changed. From his unwillingness to join, he wanted to leave the next year but was quoted by the team to stay in the team, to the 2014-15 season where the Pelicans had slightly integrated their combat power, he also said, "In New Orleans, we will continue to climb up." This kind of speech that agrees with the team, but everything is realistic.

The higher the Pelicans climb, the demand for combat power gradually increases. When the senior management believes that another ball holding point in the backcourt needs, they even choose to use Holiday as a double-season guard. Gordon, who was originally a simple second position, will inevitably be squeezed, and his injury history also makes the team no longer regard him as the core target. When Gordon became a free agent again in 2016, the Pelicans chose Hilde in the draft, and it was already obvious that the team's choice was made.

Originally, because Gordon was the future that the Clippers valued, he was the value of becoming the core bargaining chip in the trading. He was indeed the core of being valued, but his repeated injuries finally made the team retreat. Finally, under the team's choice, Gordon, who was named twice by the Hornets, did not get the third time he brought his mobile phone.

After leaving the Pelicans, Gordon signed a four-year contract of 53 million. With the player's value generally rising, judging from a scorer with an average of about 15 points per game, this is definitely not too expensive. To some extent, it also proves that his injury history in the past five years has indeed affected his value trend.

just after joining the Rockets, good luck that was good for him began to come overnight. Perhaps after winning the championship with the Warriors Splash Brothers in 2015, the NBA entered the era of three-pointers, with three-pointers changing from assisting tactics to the main line of many projection teams, and Rockets head coach D'Antoni began to pay attention to three-pointers when coaching the Suns. With the arrival of the three-point era, Gordon was able to maintain good attendance in the hands of the coach who valued three-pointers, and his career finally shone.

In the three years of 2016-19, Gordon only missed 34 games in total. At the same time, with an average of 3.2 three-pointers per game, he scored a total of 680 three-pointers in three years. In three years, he basically maintained a single-season three-point production of 200 points. In addition to Gordon, he is all All-Star players such as Curry, Clay, Harden, Kemba Walker, and Lillard. For Gordon, who had full firepower, although he didn't have to score 20 points stably in every game, he was already the third main scorer of the Rockets at that time. He also won the best sixth man in the first year of the transfer.

In the hands of D'Antoni, Gordon focused on firing from the outside and connected the team's offense with the second team's firepower. Gordon, who is famous for his scoring firepower, got his most comfortable positioning. The Rockets' four-year contract renewal of 75.6 million yuan the year before, and it will be guaranteed by 2024. By then, he is already a 36-year-old veteran.

Finally, Gordon's scoring firepower was recognized by the league, but all of this has nothing to do with the Pelicans.

For Gordon and the Pelicans, the meeting between them was destined to be a happy story, but both sides are actually running-in. If everything goes smoothly as expected, Gordon, who has the outside firepower, has always been the team's backcourt firepower before Holiday joined, and will be the suitable third leader after Holiday joins. The future that was once valued by the Clippers does have the opportunity to bloom in New Orleans.

But repeated injuries eventually made all this missed. Regardless of whether it was related to injuries, the Pelicans' progress cannot be considered progress. The team has many resources but has not been able to sprint with the most complete lineup. Three or four years later, the player's contract expires again and needs to face a second decision.

It is in this objective context that Gordon spent four years passing by the Pelicans. It is sad to say that from the Clippers, Hornets/Pelicans, to the Rockets, Gordon's most unhealthy days in his career are almost all in New Orleans, so whether it is his youth that gives people unlimited expectations or his prime when he finally has value, he has no championship with the Pelicans. For both, this is destined to be a regrettable miss.

If we can start over, we also want to see if Gordon, who was later in the Rockets, could play some different New Orleans Storm if he could maintain his health and match Davis; or whether Gordon's excellent passing vision in the shooting guard could complement Holiday, become Davis's backcourt assistant, and play some results that far exceed expectations.

But this is just a hypothesis after all, and these assumptions we have been looking forward to can only be kept in anticipation.