New Orleans Pelicans: Rough Way To Enter The Holidays
By Owen Sanborn
The New Orleans Pelicans were flying high (pun intended) entering their Tuesday night matchup against the Indiana Pacers. They were coming off of a big road victory over the lethal Oklahoma City Thunder and knew that the lowly Pacers were the next team on their schedule before a quick Christmas hiatus.
I even (stupidly) dedicated a whole piece to them about how they gotta let the good times roll. Well, it looks like I may have put the kibosh on any chance of a Pelicans winning streak with that post. I should try to remember to use my jinxing powers for good.
The theme of the Pelicans season thus far has been inconsistency (their 14-14 record in one indication) and that proved true once again on Tuesday night. Young teams with a young star (some people forget that Anthony Davis is still only freaking 21 years old!!) are bound to go through their share of inconsistencies.
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That’s a part of the process.
But when you are coming off of a huge road victory against a legitimate conference with a tough schedule ahead (Spurs, Bulls, Suns, Spurs, Rockets, Wizards) you have to take advantage and pull out a victory somehow, someway.
The offense came out flat on Tuesday, often leaving itself to be at the mercy of Indiana’s stifling interior defense. Roy Hibbert played like a mad man and recorded seven blocked shots (all in the first half), but he impacted more shots than the stats can show.
New Orleans managed only 84 points against the struggling Pacers, 18.5 points less than their season average. There were optimal opportunities for the Pelicans to grab hold of the lead, but pour attention to detail on the defensive end allowed the Pacers to secure some easy baskets and get set into their half court defense.
Indiana’s ball movement on offense gave the Pelicans fits on defense, resulting in 24 assists compared to only 15 for New Orleans. Time and time again an Indiana player would penetrate into the lane, causing one of the bigs to lumber over and help and put a monkey wrench into the entire defensive scheme.
New Orleans’ defense is primarily menacing due to the shot blocking talents of Davis, Omer Asik, Jeff Withey and Alexis Ajinca, but on this night, they only managed two blocked shots, four less than their season average.
Again, I believe this can be attributed to the ball movement of the Pacers, which created open shot opportunities around the rim. Asik and Davis were often too late on their rotations and could not get to the shooter in time to alter any shots.
Bottom line for the Pelicans is that Tuesday night was a bad loss. It is imperative that they take advantage of any weaker Eastern Conference game that they get on the schedule because there are no easy games in the Western Conference.
Fans and players alike will shake this off as just another game — and that’s all just well and dandy — but in the grand scheme of things this was not just another game. New Orleans wants to make the playoffs RIGHT NOW and there is no way that is going to happen if they continue to play inconsistently.
Woo, man. Get me some egg nog, I’m in need of some holiday cheer.