New Orleans Pelicans vs Atlanta Hawks - Preseason - 0-2

GAMEDAY

🆚 : Hawks
🕜: 2:30pm CT#Pelicans | @SmoothieKing pic.twitter.com/mpLWh21wro

— New Orleans Pelicans (@PelicansNBA) October 14, 2023

We have seen so much garbage so far during preseason. Defensive breakdowns all over the place, broken or lazy offensive sets, a completely mis-managed offense where players get frozen out completely, and a lot of hero-ball attempts from people who are not good enough to be trying to be heroic.

There have been moments of success. First quarter of game 1 was a lot of fun, and the offense using Zion at the elbow as a distributor was fun and effective. Herb has shot well so far. Ingram's shot profile has been good - and so has CJ, who has mostly moved off ball. Game 2 Dyson was good, and Hawkins broke out of his cold streak of shooting.

So it's not like there's been nothing good. But the good things have been vastly overshadowed by considerably larger quantities of trash. This team needs to get it together pretty quickly - the season starts in less than 2 weeks.

Let's see if the Rocket thrashing has awoken a little bit of pride in them.

Let’s start with them atleast running down the court and moving. If they can do that. Progress has been made.

This team is terrible.

Ok, at what point can we panic? This is another non competitive game with all of our starters in.

Above all the other on-court issues we have, we have to find someone to make these guys take the game seriously and hold people accountable for just flat out lazy effort. I don't think that player, or coach, is on our roster right now.

I knew someone was going to get hurt with this incompetent brand of basketball.

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Originally Posted by ragincaucasian

Ok, at what point can we panic? This is another non competitive game with all of our starters in.

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Historically, preseason results have no correlation with regular season results other than this:

Teams that go winless in preseason have a terrible regular season track record.

So if we go winless in preseason, I wouldn't say it's time to panic but it's definitely an ill omen.

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Originally Posted by Fedupfan

I knew someone was going to get hurt with this incompetent brand of basketball.

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Hope he's okay and not down for a long time, but at the same time, thank god it's only Naji.

It’s so hard to watch this. They are an embarrassment to New Orleans.

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Originally Posted by Fedupfan

It’s so hard to watch this. They are an embarrassment to New Orleans.

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It's better than last game, at least. When that's the best you can say it's not a good sign, but it's something.

I ain’t going out sad again ✌��

— Jose Alvarado (@AlvaradoJose15) October 14, 2023

Losing by 20+. And I also have no idea what that Alvarado tweet even means.

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Originally Posted by ragincaucasian

Losing by 30. And I also have no idea what that Alvarado tweet even means.

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Went out sad last year. Seems determined. We could do with a Jose right now.

Dyson still looking good though. If there's a bright spark in the last two games its that Dyson has looked like a real player in both of them.

I’m just happy they took it personal. Thats what happened. After they dunked on Dyson and talked crap, the team started playing harder.

This comeback has been brought to you by: Dyson Daniels, Hawkins, Seabron, Bates, and Liddell.

Win or lose it's nice to see a group actually bring it.

Well. Putting the ball in Zion's hands and running offense through him didn't help anything. The bad ball handling, bad passes, and general discombobulation continued. Perhaps even worse.

The very bad defense from CJ and Zion didnt get better either. They seem like a team that is thinking too much rather than playing with any rythym.

The good news is they finally woke up in the 3rd after the Hawks were literally trying to harlem globe trotter them. Starters played better and the reserves kept it going.

Hawk can shoot. Dyson has been consistently impressive. EJ needs more minutes. Please come back Jose.

I enjoyed the end effort. That’s all we can really ask for.

Better than last game. I’ll take that. Stay healthy and I’m not too concerned. Don’t want to see blowouts like the last game but preseason results are not the most important thing in the world. We need to find our identity though. Whether we surround Zion with spacers when he is on the floor or we go with CJ at 6th man to balance the lineup, we need to figure out what freakin team we want to be. We look aimless at times, but in fairness preseason is a time for experimentation. I hope it isn’t just a case of we are this bad without Trey

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Originally Posted by JJackisangry

Better than last game. I’ll take that. Stay healthy and I’m not too concerned. Don’t want to see blowouts like the last game but preseason results are not the most important thing in the world. We need to find our identity though. Whether we surround Zion with spacers when he is on the floor or we go with CJ at 6th man to balance the lineup, we need to figure out what freakin team we want to be. We look aimless at times, but in fairness preseason is a time for experimentation. I hope it isn’t just a case of we are this bad without Trey

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Without Trey. And Jose. And for a significant portion of this game, Herb.

And also none of our starters are playing more than 25 minutes.

Also we're giving minutes to guys like Trey Jemison.

Don't get me wrong, we've sucked overall this pre-season but every team looks worse in pre-season because camp isn't over and they're not playing realistic rotations or minute distributions.

I don't even really care about the starters offense tonight - CJ and BI were shooting badly most of the game (BI got a few to fall late in his run) but the shots were still mostly good and that matters more to me, sometimes they don't go down. Zion started a little cold but finished the night 5/11 and got to the line 8 times, so again, perfectly happy with his scoring - and his passing was pretty good too. A bunch of nice assists and a bunch of passes that could have been nice assists if other people didn't miss.

Obviously defense is the biggest concern so far, but a lot of that defense comes from the turnovers (not all of it, don't get me wrong, there are other issues) so if that can be cleaned up a little then that'll improve naturally as well. Tonight Zion and BI both had 3 TOs, and CJ had 4 - that's just not good. Naji has been racking TOs up this preseason too, his TO% has got to be diabolical right now.

The bad news is that there are a ton of problems.
The good news is that a lot of them seem relatively fixable.
The other bad news is that I have no faith in this team or coaching staff to fix it quickly, if at all.

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Originally Posted by Pelicanidae

Hope he's okay and not down for a long time, but at the same time, thank god it's only Naji.

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Playing favorites and being a Fanboy as you are, is cute. But this is just drop dead cold.

Pelicans say Naji Marshall has been diagnosed with a bone bruise in his knee after undergoing an MRI this morning.

He'll be reevaluated in two weeks.

— Will Guillory (@WillGuillory) October 15, 2023

Not the kind of injury that's going to harm him long term, but rough.

Still, we know what 2 weeks can mean.