NEW ORLEANS — Saddiq Bey never played a game for the Washington Wizards. He signed with them, tore his ACL before the season started, spent 14 months rebuilding his left knee, and got traded to New Orleans while still in a brace — arriving in a city that had agreed to take him entirely on credit. On Thursday, the Pelicans decided the credit was good, agreeing to a three-year, $55.5 million contract extension that locks in the 26-year-old forward through the 2029-30 season.
The numbers he put up last year earned the bet. In 72 games — his first professional appearances since the 2023-24 season — Bey averaged 17.7 points, 5.6 rebounds and 2.5 assists while shooting 45.1 percent from the field and 36.7 percent from three. Every figure was a career best by a significant margin; his previous high in scoring was 10.6 points per game with the Detroit Pistons three seasons ago. The gap between those two versions of himself is wide enough that the Pelicans chose to treat the comeback year not as a statistical anomaly but as the player he actually is.
Joe Dumars, the franchise’s executive vice president of basketball operations, said Bey “represents the culture we are establishing in New Orleans” — citing his toughness, professional mindset, and the consistency of his preparation as the reasons the front office committed to him. The extension starts at $20.1 million annually and descends to $16.9 million by its third year, a structure that reflects a negotiation where both sides had something to protect: the Pelicans wanted flexibility if the knee became a recurring problem; Bey wanted certainty. The fully guaranteed language was the Pelicans’ concession, and it signals something. When a franchise building from a 26-56 record gives guaranteed money to a player with a torn-ACL history, that is not hedging.
New Orleans finished 11th in the Western Conference last season, fired head coach Willie Green 13 games in after a 1-12 start, and spent the rest of the year under interim coach James Borrego in a holding pattern. Jamahl Mosley, hired in May, arrives with a roster that has almost no proven infrastructure around Bey aside from a lottery pick still to be developed. The extension is not Mosley’s most urgent challenge — that would be establishing any credible defensive identity on a team that gave up the fourth-most points per game in the league last season — but it removes one uncertainty. He knows who Bey is, and he knows Bey will be there.
Bey’s position in the Pelicans’ construction is specific. He is a 6-foot-8 forward who can guard three positions, shoot off the dribble and off movement, and rebound at a rate that supplements the team’s interior work without demanding he be the anchor. He does not need the ball to be effective, which matters on a team that is still figuring out who its primary creator is. The Pelicans will not have a Nikola Jokic-level hub to organize their offense this season. They will have Bey, a developing lottery pick, and a coaching staff trying to establish the franchise’s first coherent identity in years.
DeMar DeRozan accepted the veteran minimum to chase a ring in Denver earlier this month, and the contrast is instructive. DeRozan, at 37 and with six All-Star selections, chose to maximize his remaining competitive window over financial security. Bey, at 26 and with a career-high season still warm in the memory, chose the opposite — financial security over the leverage he might have extracted on the open market with another strong year. The Pelicans made that decision easier by meeting him in the middle before the market had a chance to test the price.
The extension is also fully guaranteed, which is not a given for a player whose most significant injury came as recently as 2024. The Pelicans spent part of their summer pursuing veteran center depth and came away without the upgrades they sought — meaning the 2026-27 roster around Bey is not dramatically different from the one that went 26-56. What has changed is the coaching staff and, now, the certainty about Bey’s status.
What nobody can honestly assess is the durability question. Bey played 72 games last season, an encouraging number for a player returning from reconstructive knee surgery. But 72 games in a low-leverage season on a team without playoff pressure is a different ask than 72-plus games on a team that Mosley will push to compete from October. That is not a knock on the extension; it is the open variable in any multi-year deal for a player whose knee was rebuilt two years ago. The Pelicans have decided they can live with the uncertainty. The fully guaranteed structure says so.
The franchise’s official announcement confirmed the deal’s terms and noted the six-month no-trade clause that prevents Bey from being moved before March. The Pelicans open training camp September 29.
