American reporter: Former Pelicans president Griffin wanted to fire Willie Green last year, but the boss vetoed it.

6686 Sports News, November 15, the Pelicans officially announced today that the team fired coach Willie Green and assistant coach Borrego will serve as the interim coach.

Subsequently, TA reporter William Guillory published an article reporting insider information on Willie Green's dismissal:

Willie Green led the team to the playoffs twice and won the team's first 49-win or more season during his tenure since the 2008-09 season. While Green's first few seasons at the helm were promising, things quickly deteriorated over the past year. Due to constant injuries, the team only achieved 21 wins and 61 losses in the 24-25 season. The team's former president of basketball operations David Griffin was fired the day after the regular season ended.

After Joe Dumars succeeded Griffin as the new head of basketball operations, Willie Green temporarily retained his position as head coach, but his status with the team was shaky. According to sources, before Griffin was fired, he tried to fire Willie Green in the 24-25 season and let Borrego serve as the interim coach, but the move was vetoed by team owner Gayle Benson. Benson remains confident in Willie Green's coaching potential when the roster is strong, but others within the team believe Green has obvious issues with strategic planning and rotation management.

Although Dumars chose to retain Willie Green after taking over, the new management usually does not retain coaches from the previous system for a long time. Most people didn't expect Green to be fired so early in the season, but league insiders generally believe it was only a matter of time before he parted ways with the Pelicans.

When Willie Green was coaching the Pelicans, he was plagued by frequent injuries, especially the long-term absence of the team's core Zion Williamson. In both playoff games when he coached the Pelicans (against the Suns in 2022 and against the Thunder in 2024), Zion was absent due to injury. In the first four seasons of Green's coaching, he only coached 73 games in which "Zion + Ingram" were both healthy. The two of them were the core combination chosen by the Pelicans in the post-Anthony Davis era, but they have been injured for many years, which made it difficult for Willie Green to truly improve the team.