8th November - New Orleans Pelicans VS Toronto Raptors - 1-6
It's getting quite painful.
7 games in, almost 10% of the season gone, and we have yet to get our 2nd win, which is just sad, to me. I shed tears over it nightly. Joking. Mostly.
Let's look at our team so far, statistically, per game:
Offensive Rating: 110 (6th in the NBA)
Defensive Rating: 114.6 (29th)
Rebounds: 45.1 (27th)
Assists: 28 (9th)
Steals: 8.9 (11th)
Blocks: 5 (19th)
So what does that translate to? Well, lots of losses. We aren't quite a top 5 offense, but we are teetering on the edge of being the worst defense in the entire NBA. We are bottom 5 in rebounds, and the only stat we crack the top 10 in aside from ORtg is assists: where we're 9th. You know things are going weird when the Pelicans are barely a top 10 assists team. Last season, we were 3rd, and the year before that, 3rd again. Now, in fairness, 28 assists a game is still a lot of assists: in fact, it's more per-game than we had last year. Our fall in the ranks isn't because we're passing less, it's because everyone else is passing more. But it's still not where we want to be. Top 5 again should be the goal.
Favors should be back tonight, so hopefully he can chip in on the boards and do some work to prevent us getting outrebounded by the Raptors, who aren't that much better than us on the boards, falling at 23rd in the NBA themselves. We have a chance to really try and win this rebounding battle tonight. Obviously boards aren't the only thing that matters, but it's not entirely a coincidence that we have 1 win, and that's the only game where we won the rebounding battle.
The Raptors are our opponents tonight. We've already played them once this year, at opening night, where we almost won. It was a close game that we lost in overtime.
What we need to change from that game is kind of easy to say. Siakam put up 34/18/5 on us. We can't let him do that again. VanVleet put up 34 as well. Can't let him do that either. If we can pull together defensively even just a little bit with the return of Favors, this game is winnable despite the drastic difference in the W/L columns.
I'm looking for the team to recognise that what they've been doing so far just isn't good enough, and to come in like a house of fire. If they can do that, and push this to a close one (or even get that W!) I'll be happy. Let's go out and get the win. #WBD