Alvin Gentry: Philadelphia 76'ers vs. New Orleans Pelicans 2016

New Orleans Pelicans head coach Alvin Gentry watches during the game between the Philadelphia 76ers and New Orleans Pelicans at the Smoothie King Center on Friday, February 19, 2016.

((Photo by Michael DeMocker, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune))

When an NBA team finishes 30-52, there's plenty of blame to go around.

The New Orleans Pelicans 2015-2016 season was a debacle, from the 1-11 start to the embarrassing 144-109 loss in Minnesota to end it.

There's no way to sugarcoat how bad it was. The Pelicans had the sixth worst record in the NBA. Their 15-game decline in the win column from a year ago was third worst in the league. Four consecutive seasons of tangible improvement in the win-loss record came to an abrupt halt. It was the franchise's fourth worst record overall since moving to New Orleans in 2002.

The Pelicans had myriad problems, chief among them a devastating and unprecedented run of injuries. But Alvin Gentry wasn't the reason this team never lived up to expectations. The Pelicans' first-year head coach was an asset, not a liability.

Can he take the Pelicans to the next level, the goal general manager Dell Demps established when he fired Monty Williams a year ago? No one can honestly answer that question.

I just know it's impossible and patently unfair to evaluate Gentry's performance given the extraordinary circumstances he encountered.

Pelicans players collectively missed an NBA-high 351 games because of injuries, and as a result Gentry was forced to employ 42 different starting lineups, roughly a new unit every other game.

By season's end, the Pelicans were down to seven healthy players and had players that averaged a collective 100-points-a-game in suits on the bench. The helter-skelter absurdity was such that James Ennis literally stepped on the court for his Pelicans debut a few hours after arriving at the arena from the airport.

Gregg Popovich and Pat Riley couldn't have won with some of the rag-tag lineups Gentry was forced to utilize. The man was taking a slingshot to a gunfight nightly.

New Orleans Pelicans head coach Alvin Gentry during the game between the Portland Trailblazers and New Orleans Pelicans at the Smoothie King Center on Wednesday, December 23, 2015.

"I've never experienced anything like it and I've been in coaching for almost 38 years," Gentry said Thursday at his postseason press conference. "I really would have brought a voodoo doctor into this place if I could have."

The Pelicans' injury spree was so widespread and hit so many core players it prevented the team from developing any kind of continuity.

The Pels' most frequently used lineup - Omer Asik, Anthony Davis, Alonzo Gee, Tyreke Evans and Eric Gordon - started only 13 games together. No other unit started more than six games together. And while Asik, Davis, Gordon, Jrue Holiday and Ryan Anderson managed to play 33 games together, they rarely had a string of more than five consecutive contests together.

All things considered, I think Gentry did an admirable job of holding things together. Other than a handful of stinkers early on, his teams competed hard and never used the injuries as a crutch until the season was essentially over.

"It was a tough year, a very tough year," Gentry said. "Injuries decimated our team. ... If you were college student, this (season) would be an incomplete."

Give the same grade to Gentry.

Was he perfect? Of course, not.

Gentry's critics will point to the Pelicans' ugly 12-21 in games when Davis, Asik, Gordon, Holiday and Anderson played together. They'll note how Memphis was equally decimated by the injury bug and still managed to make the playoffs. And they'll cite the Pelicans' miserable defensive efficiency numbers.

Gentry even admitted there were things he'd do differently if he had to start the season over again. He'd push the ball on offense more often and drill his team to improve its defense on pick-and-rolls and dribble penetration. These were season-long problems and Gentry and defensive specialist Darren Erman must be held accountable for addressing them in the offseason.

That said, it's difficult to establish pace when you have only eight healthy players available. And it's hard to stop Tony Parker and Russell Westbrook from getting in the lane with D-League defenders.

That was the reality of the 2015-2016 Pelicans.

"It's so tough to judge anything that went on this year because collectively we never were able to stick the team out there on the floor - not for one minute - that we thought we'd have," Gentry said.

"I do think, once healthy, we have a good basketball team," he added. "We've got a team that is capable of being a playoff team."

Indeed, the Pelicans showed their potential by beating the Spurs, Cavaliers and Thunder this season. It's reasonable to think they could have won 45 to 50 games if healthy, which would have been good for the No. 5 seed in the West.

But that can't solely be the goal, either.

Davis is a once-in-a-generation talent. The Pels can win a championship with him. They should win a championship with him. But the ceiling has to be higher than just making the playoffs. Being the Cincinnati Bengals of the NBA isn't good enough.

And therein lies the real problem for Gentry and the Pelicans' brain trust. The Pelicans today are no closer to challenging the Golden State Warriors, San Antonio Spurs and Western Conference elite than they were a year ago. In fact, one could argue they are even further away from that goal.

Meanwhile, precocious young outfits in Minnesota, Utah and Portland have gained considerable ground and threaten to pass New Orleans in years to come.

The Pelicans find themselves cycling in the NBA peloton between these two formidable groups: Not talented enough to keep pace with the title contenders, and not promising or resourceful enough to stay ahead of the teams of the future.

Gentry, Demps and director of basketball operations Mickey Loomis must somehow find a way to vault the franchise out of the NBA's middle class. And they need to figure it out fast. The clock is ticking on the A.D. era. They can't afford to squander another year like this one. And they need more than a voodoo doctor to reverse the curse.