New Orleans Pelicans: Recapping the road trip from hell

The New Orleans Pelicans finished their brutally difficult five-game road trip winless and with more questions than answers about their roster depth.

The New Orleans Pelicans are 4-6 and currently mired in a six-game losing streak, but the sky is not falling just yet. Monday night’s loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder capped off the Pelicans’ most brutal road trip of the season (and one of the hardest road trips any team faces in 2018-19).

Playing five games in eight days, the Pelicans faced the Denver Nuggets, Golden State Warriors, Portland Trail Blazers, San Antonio Spurs and Oklahoma City Thunder. All five of those teams finished last season with 46 or more wins, and each had an over/under line of at least 42 wins, per Odds Shark. The road trip was an absolute gauntlet, and even though the Pels head home winless, there is no need to hit the panic button.

While the Pelicans certainly didn’t perform up to expectations, the injury bug has already it the team hard. Anthony Davis has missed three of the past six games with an elbow strain and was clearly bothered by the injury’s lingering effects when he was playing. Elfrid Payton also missed the entire road trip with an ankle injury.

Davis’ health is obviously paramount to the Pelicans’ success, but with how badly the team missed Payton’s presence could be a bad omen for this team’s ceiling.

Here are some tidbits on New Orleans’ six-game losing streak (*I realize the game against the Utah Jazz was not a part of the road trip, but I’m including it here due to AD’s injury*) and its trip through the Western Conference’s very own hell.

No Davis, no chance

The Pelicans have sunk to dead-last in the NBA is opponent points per game, allowing 120.7 a game. That is largely because of how dreadful their defense has looked without AD patrolling the paint. Without Davis, New Orleans allowed the Utah Jazz to hang 132 points on them, the Nuggets to put up 116 and the Trail Blazers to also drop 132.

Among the Pelicans who’ve played at least 100 minutes, Davis is the only one who has a defensive rating comfortably under 110, sitting at a tidy 108.0. When AD isn’t out there, the Pelicans defense tumbles to a 117.4 defensive rating. It is similarly terrible — 117.2 — without Jrue Holiday.

New Orleans is bottom-five in opponent field goal percentage (48.1 percent), opponent 3-point percentage (38.8 percent) and opponent assists per game (26.9 per game). Davis is the only player on the roster that is a proven rim protector, so when he isn’t playing, things like this:

and this:

happen regularly.

Davis tried to get back on the court immediately, which led to him playing against the Warriors and then having to sit out the next night in Portland. Regardless, he was nowhere near his usual effectiveness; he shot just 18-of-49 and only recorded 28 rebounds in the three games he did play, and looked lethargic at times defensively.

Especially against the Spurs and Thunder, having to face off against big, physical centers in LaMarcus Aldridge and Steven Adams seemed to slow AD down.

A dearth of playmakers

Jrue Holiday is not a point guard and fits much more naturally at the 2-spot. There’s a reason he shared the floor with Rajon Rondo so much last season and why he’s been starting alongside point guard Elfrid Payton so far this year.

Despite playing well to start the year, Payton didn’t figure to be a world-beater for the Pelicans. And yet, the team’s offense has cratered without him (and a healthy AD, admittedly). When Payton is on the court, the Pels’ offense runs to the tune of a 117.6 rating, and when Payton sits, that number drops over ten points to 107.3.

Those figures may be exaggerated because Payton got to play the Sacramento Kings and Brooklyn Nets while avoiding better defenses (so far) like the Nuggets and Thunder, but the effect itself is real to some degree.

Holiday and Payton are the only reliable playmaking guards on New Orleans’ roster, which spells doom if Payton’s injury lingers or Holiday goes down.

Without Payton, the Pelicans had to turn to a slew of subpar options. Tim Frazier is a journeyman with a -27 net rating in 104 minutes, Frank Jackson is an overmatched 20-year-old with a -3.2 point differential and Ian Clark, averaging just 2.9 assists per 36 minutes and sporting an 11.5 assist percentage for his career, has never been a playmaker. All three struggled to consistently facilitate over the course of the road trip, leading the offense to sputter when Holiday sat.

Over this six-game losing streak, the Pelicans have averaged fewer assists (24.3 per game to 29.0), more turnovers (17.3 per to 11.8) and shot worse from 3 (32 percent to 39.8 percent) than in their four victories. All of that stems from the ball movement Payton spurs and the humongous drop-off between him and the other guards on the roster.

Julius Randle, difference-maker?

Randle is averaging 18.2 points and 7.5 rebounds in 24.2 minutes per game on .565/.333/.708 shooting splits. He is top-30 in the league in both defensive rebounding percentage and overall rebounding percentage, and is shooting 69.6 percent at the rim. He is doing what he came to New Orleans to do. Yet, he has been ineffective defensively and sports a -20.4 net rating.

Randle has only started one game this year, so his hasn’t gotten the minutes alongside Davis that Nikola Mirotic has, but somehow that hasn’t mattered either. The Davis-Randle pairing has struggled mightily on offense and posted a ghastly -8.5 overall net rating in 107 minutes.

Judging by the eye test, Randle still can’t protect the rim, is often slow rotating and is way, way too confident in his 3-point stroke. Ten games is too small of a sample size to draw any definitive conclusions, but as of now Randle’s stats seem full of air.

Interesting lineup notes

Due to Davis and Payton both missing time this early in the season, the Pelicans haven’t been able to build up much continuity. Only five lineups have played more than 10 minutes together so far. Three of those lineups are without Elfrid Payton, and two have negative net ratings.

More interestingly, the Davis-Mirotic-Randle trio has gotten its most significant playing time over the past two games against the Spurs and Thunder. The trio has only played 16 minutes so far, but played extended minutes in the fourth quarter in both games, posting a +4 against the Spurs in what was essentially extended garbage time and a +3 against the Thunder in crunch time.

Jrue Holiday continues to be a steadying force, as he has a positive net rating with every other Pelicans starter. The Holiday-Davis pairing still rules, posting a +11.7 net rating, while Holiday has had mixed results with the team’s other big men — a +2.3 rating with Mirotic and a -10.9 rating with Randle.

The takeaway

Don’t panic, Pelicans fans. A six-game losing streak is never good, but under the circumstances of injuries and scheduling, this team’s future is not in doubt simply because they got swept on this road trip.

New Orleans’ ceiling definitely seems lower than it did a week ago when the NBA was overreacting to the 4-0 start, but as long as AD (and Payton, to a lesser extent) is healthy for the majority of the season, losing to playoff-caliber opponents on the road does not doom the season.