Murray Claims 'Sabotage' Inside the Pelicans, Then Deletes the Posts

Dejounte Murray accused his own team of sabotage, then deleted the evidence. The Pelicans guard fired off two posts late Wednesday after New Orleans lost 145-111 at home to Brooklyn, its fourth straight defeat, and both posts were gone within hours. The screenshots were not.

What did Murray actually write?

The first post answered a stat. The X account NBACentral noted that New Orleans is 1-8 this season when Murray plays and 3-0 when he sits, having missed three games earlier in November for the birth of his son. Murray replied: “From what’s going on INSIDE, this sounds like someone hit you to say this!! THE ‘SABOTAGE’ IS REAL!!” He deleted it shortly after. The second post answered a clip. The Pelicans podcast ProPelsTalk posted footage of Murray throwing a turnover intended for teammate Saddiq Bey, and Murray blamed Bey’s spacing instead of his own pass. “Ohhhhh let’s talk about it,” he wrote. “When you run post plays, are they supposed to catch on the block or the 3pt line? Let’s hear it Mr social media coach, Gm and President? You have no f---ing clue what we dealing with. Maybe you should ask the whole team individually how they feel on a serious note and then pull rethink a lot of s—t. You’ll be embarrassed to be a fan of this s—t IF YOU KNEW WHY I’m saying scapegoat or sabotage based off what’s going on real talk!!!” That post was deleted too.

What set him off?

A number that made him the problem, on a night when the whole team was the problem. Murray finished the Brooklyn loss with five points on 2-of-6 shooting, four assists and two turnovers in 28 minutes, and he has scored in single digits in three of his last four outings. But the 1-8 record with him and 3-0 without him is the kind of split that follows a player around, and Murray read it as a plant from inside the organisation rather than a coincidence. He named no one and offered no evidence of who supposedly prompted the post. The accusation is the story, and the absence of a name is the hole in it. The Pelicans are 4-8, and the last three games have been routs: 145-111 to Brooklyn, 138-87 to Golden State two nights earlier, the worst regular-season loss in franchise history at 51 points, and 139 conceded in the game before that. Fans were leaving the Smoothie King Center before the fourth quarter started against Brooklyn.

What did Zion Williamson say?

The opposite of what Murray said. Williamson called the performance unacceptable and told everyone to look in the mirror, including Murray. “As men we have to, as a unit, players, coaches, everybody, you have to go look yourself in the mirror when you by yourself and say, ‘Did I do everything that I needed to do for my team?’” Williamson said. “I said nobody likes to lose like this, but if we don’t like to lose like this, we have to start with ourselves first.” It is the franchise star demanding collective accountability on the same night his teammate hinted at an inside job. Williamson has played 11 of the first 12 games, averaging 32.7 minutes a night, and he has never reached the playoffs, so the mirror speech is also a player who has run out of patience with losing in a way Murray’s posts are not.

What has coach Jamahl Mosley said?

He saw this coming, in his own way. Mosley warned about negative body language after the first four-game losing streak of the season, telling players not to overreact but to bounce out of it and fill teammates up with encouragement when they check in and out of the game. After Wednesday he admitted the defensive failure plainly: “I’m not doing my job in this moment by getting guys to sit down and guard.” His comments came before Murray’s posts, not after them, which is the awkward part for the coach: he had already named the mood in the locker room, and then his starting guard named a conspiracy. The week had already produced a strange sight, with Derik Queen leaving the bench and wandering around the court during the Golden State game. Mosley explained Queen had been talking about his neck and went to get it treated, adding that the optics are not what they want them to look like. The Pelicans have had discipline questions before this week, most recently when a rookie was ejected for an elbow, but a starting guard accusing his own club of sabotage is a different category.

Has Murray been unhappy before?

Reports say he is unhappy with his role and has clashed with Mosley, who was hired this offseason after five years with Orlando. He is averaging 13.4 points, 4.6 rebounds and 4.4 assists in nine games, well below his All-Star form, and has ceded touches to second-year guard Jeremiah Fears while working back from an Achilles injury that limited him to 45 games across the past two seasons. The contrast with training camp is sharp. At Media Day he told ClutchPoints he never lives his life worrying about what somebody not in these rooms is saying, and that criticism of how he plays is fair game. A month into the season he is arguing on social media with people outside those rooms about film study and play design. The locker-room warning that landed hardest this autumn came from a veteran telling a young guard not to plot against teammates, and Murray’s posts are the version of that warning playing out in public.

What happens next?

The Pelicans host the Memphis Grizzlies on Friday, and the first question is whether Murray or the team addresses the posts at all. The second is whether the NBA or the club treats a public sabotage accusation as a discipline matter. Marcus Smart was suspended three games this week for punching Charles Bassey, which shows the league is willing to act fast on player conduct, though a deleted tweet is not a punch. Murray named no one and offered no evidence, so the story now turns on who speaks first and what they say. The last time a Pelican returned from a long absence, the homecoming carried its own storyline, but Murray’s return from injury has produced the opposite: a guard, a stat line, and a deleted accusation that the whole building has now seen.