New Orleans Pelicans guard Dejounte Murray suffered a torn Achilles tendon in his team’s 118-116 loss to the Boston Celtics on Friday night. The injury will keep him out of action for the remainder of the season.
“Extremely difficult, when you see a guy that means so much to our team and puts the work in go down like that,” Pelicans coach Willie Green said after the game. “Those are the challenges that we’ve been going through pretty much all season.”
Initially ruled a right leg injury, it didn’t take long after Murray hobbled back to the locker room area to determine that it was an Achilles injury. Losing Murray is the latest in a string of injuries which have decimated the Pelicans lineup for long stretches over the course of the 2024-25 NBA season thus far.
The 28 year old had already missed 17 games this year due to a broken hand, and teammates Zion Williamson, Brandon Ingram, and Herb Jones have all missed sizeable chunks of the season as well. Currently sporting the 2nd worst record in the Western Conference at 12-37, the Pelicans are likely to be amongst the most active teams at the upcoming NBA trade deadline on February 6th.
Losers of 5 straight, New Orleans could be looking to waive the white flag at this point of the season, with names such as Williamson and Ingram making the rounds as possible trade candidates over the last few weeks.
Murray is currently averaging 17.9pts/7.4ast/6.5reb/2stl per game, with his assists and steals marks leading the team in those categories. He’s in the first year of his 4 year, $114M contract extension previously signed with Atlanta. He will be under team control through the 2026-27 campaign, then has a player option for 2027-28.
With Ingram set to become a free agent at season’s end, he seems the most likely of the Pelicans players to be moved in the next week. However persistent rumours of a possible Williamson deal haven’t gone away despite the fact that he still has another 3 years remaining on his deal beyond this season.
New Orleans is next in action against the Denver Nuggets on Monday February 3rd in a 9pm ET showdown.
Photo: Erik Drost. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.