Checking in on the undefeated New Orleans Pelicans

Lineups

Head coach Alvin Gentry has kept the Pelicans’ rotation stable to start the season, with nine players averaging more than 10 minutes a game. Every game Gentry can basically fill in the 96 available frontcourt minutes in pen, as Davis, Mirotic and Randle are averaging 89.1 minutes per game collectively — a number that was dragged down by extended garbage time against Sacramento on Friday.

With the Pelicans’ deadly combination of pace and size, they’re getting numerous mismatches inside every game, another reason for the incredible stat lines Mirotic and Randle are putting up through the first week of the season. If the opposing team goes small, NOLA will take advantage on the glass, and if the opposing team goes big, Mirotic and Davis will space the floor and have slower bigs turning in circles trying to keep up.

The Pelicans have played so well that their two most common lineups, Davis-Holiday-Payton-Mirotic-E’Twaun Moore, and the same lineup simply with Randle in place of Mirotic, have already logged 68 minutes. Both lineups have a net rating of over +23 — the kind of stability that makes life easy over the 82-game grind.

Darius Miller, Solomon Hill and Ian Clark have rounded out the rotation so far, and all three are playing about as well as they can be expected to play.

Davis and Holiday have played 35.3 and 34.4 minutes per game, respectively, and those numbers will probably need to come down a bit as a precautionary measure as the team plays more regularly, but so far, each is doing his part and then some.