Brandon Ingram skipped Pelicans volunteer team mini-camp amid questions about future

The entire New Orleans Pelicans roster recently gathered in California for a voluntary minicamp and a series of workouts. Everyone was there — Zion Williamson, newly acquired Dejonte Murray, CJ McCollum — except for two players. One of them was new center Daniel Theis, who had just finished playing for Germany in the Paris Olympics and was taking some time off.

The other was Brandon Ingram.

That according to William Guillory of The Athleticwho noted that Ingram had been one of the organizers of the workout in previous years. No official reason was given, but his absence highlights the murky state of Ingram’s future in New Orleans as he enters the final year of his contract. The Pelicans don’t want to pay Ingram the maximum contract extension he’s seeking, but attempts to trade him — ideally for a center — have found little to no interest on the market, as Guillory explained.

But with Williamson, Murray and McCollum already under lucrative contracts for at least the next two seasons and 24-year-old winger Trey Murphy now eligible to sign a big contract of his own, the Pelicans have little interest in giving Ingram a four-year extension worth an expected $207.8 million…

Meanwhile, it appears the trade market has dried up and the chances of Ingram being traded before the start of the regular season are slim… Given the circumstances, the Pelicans are willing to enter the season with this specific roster and see how Williamson, Ingram, Murray, McCollum, Murphy and Herb Jones all fit together.

All of this makes the Pelicans an interesting team to keep an eye on this season: the talent is there, but how do all the pieces of the puzzle fit together?

The Ingram trade market is quiet for two reasons. One is something we’ve written about before and that Guillory mentions: It’s not just the Pelicans who don’t want to pay Ingram max next season. Ingram may not like it, but he’s viewed the same way the Bulls’ Zach LaVine is viewed: as an All-Star scorer but not someone who does enough else to win. In the NBA’s new financial world of tax breaks, teams are going to be more cautious about who gets maxed out or near-maxed, and there’s no contending or high-profile playoff team willing to pay him that much after this season (and the price of letting him stay for a season is too high).

The other reason Ingram’s trade market is low is that the lottery-bound teams that could use Ingram as a floor raiser don’t want that floor to be raised too much in anticipation of some very deep drafts over the next two years. Even with the league’s flattened lottery odds, those teams don’t seem to be in very good shape.

Ingram may be understandably frustrated, but he enters this season as a Pelican, and whether that changes will be one of the stories to watch this season.