Bennedict Mathurin is a Pelican. Two years, $16 million, with a player option on the second year, and if you want the New Orleans Pelicans news boiled down to one sentence: a former sixth overall pick just signed a contract that lets him leave after one season if the season goes the way he thinks it will.
That is the whole story. Not the dollars. The escape hatch.
Why is Bennedict Mathurin's contract only two years?
Eight million a year is real money in a grocery store and modest money on an NBA payroll. It is the kind of figure that lands somewhere between a rotation veteran and a starter, which is a strange place for a player taken sixth in his draft class to be standing in his fifth season. The reporting that came down this morning doesn't tell us whether the short term was his idea or the market's, and I'm not going to pretend I know which. But the player option is the tell either way. Somebody in that room wanted a one-year runway, and a one-year runway only makes sense if you believe the next twelve months change the price.
Compare it to the other roster business floating around the league on the same morning. A veteran forward agreed to a one-year, $3.9 million deal in Golden State to round out a 15-man roster. That is a filler signing, and it reads like one. Mathurin's is not filler. Two years at eight per with the second year in his hands is a prove-it deal handed to a player who was drafted to be a lot more than a proof.
| The deal | Detail |
|---|---|
| Term | 2 years |
| Total | $16 million |
| Average per year | $8 million |
| Option | Player, second year |
What Bennedict Mathurin brings to New Orleans
A bucket. That is the short version and it has been the short version since Arizona. Mathurin gets downhill, he draws contact, he plays with a physical streak that a lot of wings his size never develop, and he made the All-Rookie First Team the year he came into the league. The Montreal kid who came up through the league's academy pipeline has never lacked for nerve. What he has lacked, at various points, is a clean definition of what he is: a lead scorer off the bench, a starting two-guard, a connector who moves the ball and defends multiple spots. New Orleans is now the place where that question gets answered, and the contract means it gets answered fast.
checked the almanac: he came off the board sixth in 2022 and made first-team all-rookie the next spring, which is a reminder that draft position and career arc keep entirely separate calendars.
The Pelicans, for their part, have spent years assembling wings and hoping the math works. This is a low-cost swing at a 20-plus-point-per-night ceiling with almost no long-term commitment attached, and I like it for exactly that reason. If he's the version of himself that attacks closeouts and lives at the line, they got a bargain and he opts out and gets paid properly somewhere. If it doesn't click, the sheet is clean in two summers. Both sides took the shorter road on purpose.
What comes next for Mathurin and the Pelicans
Two things I'm watching. First, the role: does he open as a starter or as the engine of the second unit, because those are two very different seasons for a scorer whose value has always tracked with his usage. Second, the shooting. The efficiency question is the one that has followed him since he was a rookie, and it's the number that decides whether that player option ever gets exercised or whether he's back on the market next summer with leverage he doesn't have today.
Sixteen million is not the story. The exit door is. He built himself a season with a deadline on it, and I've always found players are at their most interesting when the clock is visible.