November 5th - New Orleans Pelicans @ Oklahoma City Thunder - 4-5 Follow PelicansRe
Five straight losses.
And you know what's crazy? With a win tonight against the 4-4 Thunder, we'll still be a .500 team, and we'll be in the top 8 in the West despite that loss streak.
We're closing up one of the most painful roadtrips that the New Orleans Pelicans have had in a while. Over 5000 miles travelled in 5 games, and that's just Draymond Green setting screens. Okay but seriously, despite how awful this road trip has been on both our record and our morale, isn't it crazy how we'll still be .500 if we win tonight? What other year could we go on a 5 game losing streak this close to the beginning a season and still have that kind of upside? We're better this year, that's for sure.
After this one, we head home to play Chicago, and Phoenix. We could be 7-5 pretty soon. Wouldn't that be nice? By the time we play the Raptors, Payton should be back, and then I honestly give us some real chance to win that one.
Enough of clarifying how our record isn't the end of the world, let's look at this game: Oklahoma has the league's 20th ranked offense. They have the 7th best defense. Our offense is better than theirs, but our defense right now is not. The question is, can our top level offense score against their highly ranked defense more effectively than their shoddy offense can score on our shoddy defense?
They shoot 29% from 3 as a team. That's 30th in the league. They are 29th in the league in FT%, but 9th in FTAs. They are 28th in assists, 25th in rebounding (Although 10th in offensive boards: Adams is one to watch), and 27th in points per game.
Opponents take the 2nd most threes against OKC, and make the 1st most. OKC give up the 4th most rebounds.
What does that mean? Well, it means what we have been begging to happen in the last few games needs to happen now: we need to start hitting our shots, and also hit the glass. Payton being gone is part of why that's been so difficult: he was averaging 7 rebounds per game, and setting up easy shots for our perimeter guys, but between AD, Randle, Niko, and Jrue, we should still be able to outboard this Thunder team. With what is expected to be a lot of easy shots this could be the game Niko's threes will start falling again (he's had a dry spell for about 4 games now).
This game, despite the fact that Westbrook gets big numbers and PG is a good player, is very very winnable. We just need effort. Last game, we played a great 4th quarter but it was too late: the second and third had sunk us. If we can play the that high standard for even 3 of the quarters in this game, this could be an easy win.
So let's get it: back to .500, back to winning, on the way back home. #DoItBig.