Team Dreams 2K19: New Orleans Pelicans

Who will make the ultimate sacrifice?

Romantic poet Alfred de Musset’s “The Poet’s Sacrifice” expresses the essential quality of the pelican.

Tired from a long journey, the father pelican returns to his marshy home. His loving children run toward him, shrieking, shaking their hideous goiters (yes, that’s in the text). But he has nothing to feed them. The ocean was empty. The beach was deserted.

Shielding them from the wind with his wing, the father pelican, a melancholy fisherman, sighs. He plunges his sharp beak into his own chest. Their only food will be his heart. He staggers and offers them up this feast of death. But amid his sacrifice, tired of dying too slowly, he lets out such a mournful cry that the seagulls desert the shore and the traveler tarrying on the beach, feeling death pass him by, sends a prayer to God. Such are the great poets: they bring joy to mortals by serving up feasts of their own flesh and blood.

This is all a metaphor for what’s going to happen to Zion Williamson.

Forecast: not making the playoffs.