Dejounte Murray Made His Case in the Opener. The Pelicans' Defense Still Doesn't Have One.

The most interesting thing about the New Orleans Pelicans' season-opening 123-120 loss to Indiana is that almost nobody spent Wednesday morning arguing about the point guard.

That's a genuine shift. Dejounte Murray, the subject of a summer's worth of speculation about whether Jeremiah Fears would take his starting job, answered with 23 points and seven assists in 34 minutes — the heaviest workload of anyone in a Pelicans uniform. Fears played 21 minutes off the bench and scored eight. For one night, at least, Jamahl Mosley's backcourt hierarchy held.

But the Pelicans scored 120 points at home and lost, and that is the part worth sitting with. New Orleans posted a 116.5 offensive rating with a 50% effective field goal percentage on 103 possessions. Those are fine numbers — not spectacular, but entirely survivable on most nights. The problem is the other end: a 119.5 defensive rating, the same figure that showed up throughout the preseason and the one number that has followed this franchise through two straight losing seasons (26-56 last year, 21-61 the year before).

It also came against a Pacers team that won 19 games a season ago. That context matters. Opening night is a small sample and rosters churn, but the Pelicans didn't lose a shootout to a contender. They lost a shootout to a team that was every bit as bad as they were, and they did it with a defense that couldn't get stops when the game tightened.

The encouraging parts were real. Zion Williamson put up 22 points in 32 minutes. Yves Missi, handed the starting center job when the win-by-committee experiment sputtered in the preseason, responded with 13 points and 14 rebounds in 30 minutes. Derik Queen needed only 18 minutes to post 10 points and 10 boards, which will only intensify the calls for the rookie to absorb more of that rotation. Saddiq Bey carried his strong preseason finale into the regular season with 13 points. The frontcourt, supposedly the team's weakest link, mostly held up.

The quiet concern is on the wing. Jordan Poole, who entered the season with a "clean slate" from Mosley, played 15 minutes and scored four points. Trey Murphy III managed 11 points on 32 minutes. If Murray is going to be the primary creator and Zion the primary engine, those two have to convert the space that creates. Through one game, they didn't.

Then there's the schedule, which is unkind. Missi's reward for winning the job is a five-game stretch that includes Nikola Jokic twice in five days (Oct. 24 in Denver, Oct. 28 at home), with Domantas Sabonis waiting on Oct. 29. A 22-year-old center still learning the position is about to get the most brutal possible stress test, and the Pelicans' defensive infrastructure will be graded against the best offensive big man alive.

There's a version of this season where the offense is legitimately improved, Murray stabilizes the backcourt, Queen forces his way into more minutes, and the defense merely has to be mediocre. That team could hang around the play-in conversation. The market, for what it's worth, isn't buying much — BetMGM lists New Orleans among the longest of long shots to win a title, and the Pelicans' own front office spent media day talking about "spirit" and culture rather than any win benchmark.

Opening night didn't disprove any of that. It just clarified where the work is. The Pelicans won the argument about who runs the offense. Now they have to win one about getting stops, and Jokic is coming.