New Orleans Pelicans: Sharing is Caring

The Detroit Pistons obviously came out flat Wednesday night. They were lackadaisical on offense and often neglected to hustle back defensively leading to easy fastbreak shot attempts. New Orleans outrebounded them 47-30, which is pretty remarkable considering Detroit is in the upper echelon of the league in regards to rebounding.

Stan Van Gundy was having even more sideline temper tantrums than usual, creating an extra dose of entertainment for the viewers at home. At one point, I thought he might bite Kyle Singler‘s head off after an errant pass right into the hands of Dante Cunningham.

Entering the night, Pelicans faithful had to question how New Orleans was going to go about sharing the ball on offense because they were without Jrue Holiday. The ball has been sticky in recent games (they shot 20 percent in the fourth quarter in Monday’s loss against Boston), leaving both plays and coaches frustrated when things get down to the nitty gritty.

Coach Monty Williams challenged himself after Monday’s tough loss to get New Orleans to come out with more fire each and every game:

“Turnovers, offensive rebounds and I’m not doing a good job of getting our guys to play the same way every game. It’s plagued us all year long.”

Williams’ solution to the recent lack of offensive cohesion was to insert Tyreke Evans in place of the injured Jrue Holiday in the starting lineup. Normally Tyreke is a slashing, scoring guard that racks up random assists when the defense over compensates on his dribble drives.

Last night he kept his head up more on his dribble drives and was able to find shooters along the perimeter with ease en route to nine assists. He routinely was able to find Eric Gordon along the weak side of a pick and roll action with either Anthony Davis or Omer Asik, and if Gordon’s defender rotated, he was able to swing the ball over to the open man.

These possessions end with a corner three for most teams, but Cunningham is still neglecting to take ONE STEP backwards behind the line to make his jump shot worth three points instead of two. I cannot be the only one noticing this egregiousness occurring each game.

Anyways, the theme of the night for the Pelicans was tenacity and togetherness. Newly acquired Quincy Pondexter was a big reason for this as his good vibes spread well throughout the team. It felt as though Pondexter had been with the team for ten years instead of ten hours.

He was all over the place on defense, dished out an incomprehensible number of high fives/chest bumps and brought a genuine swagger to the rest of the players on the floor. Coming from a title contender in Memphis to a fringe playoff contender in New Orleans, Pondexter’s professionalism was very impressive last night.

Quotes like these really tickle my fancy: “That’s my job. Whatever Mont needs me to do, I’ll do it. I’ve grown up since I was here first. I’ve learned how to play the game, playing D, hitting open shots and doing the little things is what’s going to matter here.”

Wednesday night’s convincing victory and Pondexter’s attitude should be a nice example going forward for New Orleans to show what can happen when each player acts as though the we is greater than me.