Since his introduction at the beginning of the season, the New Orleans Pelicans’ mascot, Pierre, has haunted the dreams of everyone who’s crossed his path, easily cementing himself as the scariest mascot in all of professional sports.
Derick E. Hingle, USA TODAY Sports
As with all things this magical, it was too good to last, and the Pelicans gave him a makeover, complete with press release from the team explaining that his broken beak required surgery.
The “after” photo of his surgery didn’t give much away.
Before the team’s Wednesday night game against the Milwaukee Bucks, they listed the mascot in their injury report distributed to media.
It was inarguably the most hotly-anticipated mascot face-lift of the NBA season. At halftime, the Pelicans revealed Pierre 2.0:
It’s not awful, but it has no edge. His eyes don’t drill holes into your very essence. The beak is friendly, not demonic. There’s no real material for the Photoshop artists of Twitter to work with. You can’t superimpose this Pierre’s face onto horror-movie monsters and give it nearly the same gravitas as the original.
As far as makeovers for New Orleans icons go, this is the most disappointing since Lil Wayne’s Rebirth, which at least had some comedic value. There’s nothing here.
The moral of the story is that you can never mess with greatness.
