Entering Tuesday night, the New Orleans Pelicans had yet to come out victorious on the road against an Eastern Conference foe this season. The most passionate of Pelicans fans can recall a high scoring affair in Cleveland ending in defeat, or even the hard fought battle against the Chicago Bulls a couple of weeks back.
Those losses are deemed acceptable for a young team that generally struggles to score on the road (only scoring 101 points per 100 possessions compared to 110.9 at home).
However, a loss to the lowly Charlotte Hornets without Professor Al Jefferson, MD, and Lance Stephenson is a tough one to swallow. New Orleans wasted a strong effort from Anthony Davis, who poured in a team-leading 32 points and 12 rebounds.
The Pelicans felt in control for most of the first half, but continued to let Charlotte hang around by allowing easy lay up opportunities.
They could just never seem to break things open.
Things really came to fruition in the fourth quarter when Kemba Walker took the game into his own hands and delivered some clutch buckets down the stretch, including the game winning and 1 lay up that even he admits was partially luck:
“I don’t know how that ball went in. It was so awkward because the angle was super awkward. I just got it up and was fortunate it went in. It’s always a great feeling to make shots like that.”
Kemba came into the game hot (scoring 30 points in consecutive games) and was expected to carry the load without Jefferson and Stephenson on the floor. Jrue Holiday isn’t a bad perimeter defender, but he often is a risky one, and he struggled to contain the speedy Walker’s dribble penetration. He could have used some extra help in the form of double teams or traps.
Charlotte played Bismack Biyombo — a player with no offensive skill whatsoever — 28 minutes in this game. It seems feasible to think that extra attention from Biyombo’s man could have been thrown in the direction of Walker.
Coach Monty Williams talked after the game about how the late game offense turns into a stagnant mess, with one player trying to create a shot by dribbling while the others stand motionless:
“We fell apart. We didn’t share the ball, which is what we have been talking about, especially down the stretch of games.”
New Orleans isn’t the only team in the league that is guilty of this (cue to Oklahoma City Thunder fans nodding in agreement). When you have a crazy talented player like Anthony Davis, it is easy to throw him the ball with under two minutes in the game and expect him to take them to the promise land.
He answered the bell to the tie the game at 94 with 18.6 seconds left in the game thanks to a nifty driving floater that has quickly become one of his go-to moves. But then Kemba did Kemba things and that was that for the Pelicans.
Anthony Davis may have put it best postgame when he said, “”Kemba was just Kemba. He hit some big shots down the stretch and won the game for them.”
The loss puts New Orleans below the .500 mark and three games behind the surging Phoenix Suns in the race for the eighth seed in the Western Conference.
A critical five-game Eastern Conference swing is swiftly approaching after a quick home battle with the Memphis Grizzlies on Friday night. It’s time for New Orleans to get the east coast monkey off of their back.