How Herb Jones and CJ McCollum's extended absences could spell disaster for injury-riddled Pelicans

The New Orleans Pelicans' injury report for Friday night's game against the Indiana Pacers looks like one you'd see from a team resting key players at the end of a season before a playoff appearance, not in Week 2 of a season that has just begun. In addition to already being without Dejounte Murray, who fractured his left hand in New Orleans' first game of the season, which is expected to keep him sidelined for 4-6 weeks, as well as Trey Murphy, who hasn't appeared this season due to a right hamstring strain, the Pelicans are now adding two more important players to the injury list.

The team announced on Friday that Herbert Jones would miss 2-4 weeks after sustaining a right shoulder strain and a partial tear in his rotator cuff. CJ McCollum will also be shelved for some time. He picked up a right adductor strain during the team's loss to the Golden State Warriors on Wednesday night and will miss 2-3 weeks.

That's now four players injured who are all potential starters for a Pelicans team that hasn't been fully healthy since the regular season began. That's not even including Daniel Theis who is listed as questionable for Friday's game after exiting Wednesday's loss with an ankle injury. Or Jordan Hawkins and rookie Yves Missi who are also both listed questionable with lower back spasms and abdominal contusion, repsectively.

This was supposed to be the season that the Pelicans would finally put all the pieces together, stay healthy and make a play at a playoff run. They added Murray in the offseason via trade with the Hawks, giving them another ballhandler and initiator on offense, while also providing quality defense on the other end. Zion Williamson vowed that he was in the best shape of his life while being out to prove something this year to all the criticism said about him in years past, and Brandon Ingram's in a contract year, likely trying to prove to New Orleans and every other team in the league that he's worth another expensive, lengthy contract.

And yet, we're five games into the season and the injury bug is already hitting the Pelicans. All those absences, primarily not having Murray and Murphy on defense, have shown up in the boxscore for each of New Orleans' current three-game losing streaks. They've allowed the Trail Blazers to score 125 points, followed by 124 points scored by the Warriors, and even in the second loss to Golden State, where they only racked up 104 points, the Pelicans only mustered up 89 points. During that stretch, the Pelicans have had the 29th-ranked defense in the league, and as a whole, over the first week of the season, they've had an offense that ranks 27th.

With more injuries being tacked on to the existing ones, New Orleans' short-term future over at least the next month doesn't look great, either. This is where Williamson and Ingram should be stepping up to account for all those losses, but in Wednesday's loss to Golden State, that duo totaled just 26 points on an abysmal 10-31 from the floor. You're not going to win many games when your star duo is putting up putrid numbers like that.

Things don't appear to be getting easier any time soon for the Pelicans, especially with matchups against the Pacers, Cavaliers, Thunder and Nuggets all looming in the next two weeks. But if this is going to be the year that Williamson quiets his doubters, now is the perfect time to show up. Because a career-low 18.3 points on a shocking 36.4% from the floor isn't going to cut it.

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