Pelicans owner Gayle Benson: 'I will not sell that team, ever'
New Orleans Pelicans owner Gayle Benson insisted on Monday that she has no interest in moving the team from New Orleans.
Benson — speaking at the NFL owner’s meetings on Monday in Arizona, as she’s also the owner of the New Orleans Saints — was adamant that, despite recent struggles, she will not let the Pelicans go.
"There is no way I'm going to sell that team, ever," Benson said, via the New Orleans Times-Picayune.
“I value the Pelicans as much as I do the Saints, and I don’t look at myself as an owner of the teams. I feel like it is an asset that I am protecting for the city.”
The Pelicans have been struggling in recent years, despite a trip to the Western Conference semifinals last season, which has caused speculation about the future of the organization.
New Orleans has reached the playoffs just twice since the 2011-12 season, and will miss the postseason again this year. Star Anthony Davis publicly requested a trade this fall, too — which resulted in a circus-of-sorts between the Pelicans front office and the Los Angeles Lakers before the trade deadline. The team also fired general manager Dell Demps in February, adding even more uncertainty to the franchise.
The Pelicans are also just the second-least valuable among NBA teams at $1.2 billion, according to the latest Forbes ranking. New Orleans is just slightly ahead of the Memphis Grizzlies, while the New York Knicks lead the league at $4 billion.
All of those factors mixed together has caused many to speculate that the Pelicans could be one of the leading candidates to leave New Orleans for Seattle — a city that has longed for an NBA team since the SuperSonics left in 2008 — or another market in the future and completely rebuild.
Yet Benson, who took ownership of both the Pelicans and Saints following the death of her husband, Tom Benson, in 2018, insisted she will not let either team go — no matter what people say.
“People are going to talk and there’s really nothing you can do about that,” Benson said, via the Times-Picayune. “Time will take care of it. They’ll see that I’m sincere and I’m not going anywhere.”
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