Restricted free agent wing Bennedict Mathurin has agreed to a 2-year, $16 million contract with the New Orleans Pelicans, ESPN’s Shams Charania reported on Wednesday.
Mathurin, 24, has averaged 16.2 points, 4.7 rebounds and 1.9 assists in 28.6 minutes per game over the first four seasons of his career. He has shot 44.2% from the field and 83.8% from the free-throw line on more than five attempts per game.
That ability to get to the charity stripe has been one of the calling cards of the swingman’s game since the Indiana Pacers drafted him with the sixth overall pick in the 2022 NBA Draft. Among 199 players who have logged at least 5,000 total minutes over the past four seasons, Mathurin ranks 13th in free-throw attempt rate; among guards and wings, he ranks fifth, behind only Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, James Harden, Deni Avdija and Trae Young.
Mathurin brings a physical, north-south slashing game from the perimeter, averaging seven or more drives to the basket per game in each of his four pro seasons and taking 60% or more of his shots in the lane, according to Cleaning the Glass. It’s a relentless approach that can produce big games, like the career-high-tying 38 points in 34 minutes that he poured in for the Los Angeles Clippers against the Denver Nuggets back in February:
On the nights when Mathurin’s converting up close, getting to the line and knocking down his jumpers, he looks like the kind of one-on-one shot-creating scorer that a team can build its offense around. Those nights haven’t come as often as you’d like, though: Mathurin has shot 63% inside of 3 feet, 41% on midrange jumpers and 33.6% of his 3-point attempts — all below league-average effectiveness.
That errant shot-making, combined with a negative career assist-to-turnover ratio (500 helpers to 502 cough-ups), low block and steal rates for a wing — especially one with Mathurin’s athleticism and positional size, at 6-foot-5 and 210 pounds with a 6-foot-9 wingspan — have led to the Montreal native grading out poorly by a number of advanced metrics, including estimated plus-minus, box plus-minus, value over replacement player, player efficiency rating, win shares per 48 minutes and DARKO daily plus-minus.
The eye test, though, has shown Mathurin’s physicality and capacity to generate free throws can make him a valuable player in some postseason contexts — most notably during the Pacers’ 2025 NBA Finals run, during which he often shined off the bench, scoring 23 points in 27 minutes in Game 3 against Cleveland, 20 points in 13 minutes in Game 4 against New York, 27 points in 23 minutes in Game 3 against Oklahoma City, and 24 points with 13 rebounds in Game 7 of the Finals, with Indiana needing some offensive spark after Tyrese Haliburton ruptured his Achilles tendon.
The collision of that statistical résumé with those playoff performances has made questions surrounding what Mathurin’s ideal NBA role would look like — and what to pay him to perform it — somewhat thorny.
Mathurin’s isolation-heavy, ball-dominant style made him an at-times awkward fit in Indiana’s ball- and player-movement-heavy offensive scheme. With the Pacers changing course following Haliburton’s injury and the trade of center Myles Turner, they didn’t reach agreement on an extension of Mathurin’s rookie-scale contract heading into his fourth season, ticketing him for restricted free agency come the summer — though they did begin the 2025-26 campaign with Mathurin in the starting lineup.
After opening the season with a pair of big offensive performances against the Thunder and Grizzlies, Mathurin sprained the big toe on his right foot, sidelining him for 11 games. He’d return in mid-November, averaging 16.6 points while shooting just 45.7% on 2-pointers over the next month and a half before once again suffering an injury — this time, a sprained right thumb — that put him back on the shelf for another 11 games.
Shortly after his return to the lineup, Mathurin found himself on the move, traded to the Clippers along with center Isaiah Jackson and three draft picks — including a protected 2026 first-rounder that wound up turning into No. 5 overall pick Keaton Wagler — in the deal that brought Ivica Zubac to Indiana. Granted the freedom to cook in Tyronn Lue’s second unit, Mathurin posted career highs in usage rate, points, rebounds and assists per 36 minutes, and PER over the final 26 games in L.A.
The Clippers went 15-11 with Mathurin in the lineup during the regular season, finishing at 42-40 and in ninth place in the Western Conference. They fell to the Golden State Warriors in the play-in tournament, 126-121, with Mathurin scoring a team-high 23 points on 7-for-11 shooting in 30 minutes off the bench.
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