11th February - New Orleans Pelicans vs Portland Trailblazers - 22-31

After a couple of day's rest and 2 consecutive victories against Chicago and Indiana, the Pelicans return home to take on fellow 8th seed hunting team, the Portland Trailblazers. Before I get into any stats or playoff implication talk, here's the injury report.

Zion Williamson (Left Ankle Sprain) is probable and
Brandon Ingram (Right Ankle Sprain) is questionable for Tuesday's game vs Portland

Injury Report: https://t.co/O7Gehm3wpS#Pelicans | @MorrisBartLLC pic.twitter.com/q3pLGpHzkm

— New Orleans Pelicans (@PelicansNBA) February 10, 2020

Zion's listed still, but it's as probable, and according to people who were there at practice yesterday (Andrew Lopez, for example) it seems like he's very very likely to play. Ingram is a slightly different question, still being ''questionable'', but he could return as well. Would be nice to get them both back, but even just Zion would be a big help.

Anyway, as for the Portland Trailblazers. What to say about them? I'm not going to run down all their individual stats and stuff because we've already played them twice. We are 2-0 against Portland so far this season: with a 4 game season series, a victory tonight would guarantee us the series win and therefore grant us the tiebreaker in the event that we end up with a tied record.

Portland has done everything recently behind Lillard going nuclear. His last 10 games have seen him score 60, 47, 50, 48, 51, and 42. Overall, Dame has averaged 40.8 points per game over his last 10, on 51/51/90 splits. Just absurdity. If it's any consolation prize though, he does seem to be cooling off; in his last 4 games, he's only averaging 31 on 45/40/90, which is still incredible, but obviously a little less so. He's still hot, but it appears we may be out of the heart of the supernova.

So there's been some drop off. Hopefully we can make that drop off continue. He was only active for one of the two games we've had against Portland so far this year, but in that game he was held to 18 points on 28% shooting. Would love to see a repeat performance.

Tonight is a big game in that sense. For anyone who is still tracking playoffs, this is an important one. Hopefully we can pull the win out of the bag, seal the series over Portland, give ourselves another win, and hand another L to one of our most serious rivals; at this point, it's unlikely the Wolves catch up, but Portland are ahead of us. So let's go out and get this W. #WBD

I hope the boys are ready ... It's time to win on our floor ... This game is HUGE for us!

Appreciate the pregame analyses that you do

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Originally Posted by Dago75

Appreciate the pregame analyses that you do

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Thanks!

I watched the Trailblazer/Heat game. Lillard is shooting insane 40 foot 3s and nailing them. Jrue is literally gonna have to smother him from half court in for us to win.

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Originally Posted by ragincaucasian

I watched the Trailblazer/Heat game. Lillard is shooting insane 40 foot 3s and nailing them. Jrue is literally gonna have to smother him from half court in for us to win.

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NBAStats doesn't have a category for 30+ foot shots (you could check it but you'd have to do it individually, looking over every game yourself) but since January 1st, Damian Lillard is 5th in 25-29ft shots, taking 7.1 a game. He's shooting 44% on those threes. Only 2 other players in the top 10 of volume are hitting over 40% on those shots, and nobody else in that category is shooting better than 42%

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Originally Posted by ragincaucasian

I watched the Trailblazer/Heat game. Lillard is shooting insane 40 foot 3s and nailing them. Jrue is literally gonna have to smother him from half court in for us to win.

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if dame go off shooting crazy 3s then let him have fun...we shut everyone else down and attack dame to make him play defense and draw fouls on him...we win this game and celebrate....go pels.....

Yesterday I knew it was Monday. I also knew we played on Tuesday. Yet for some reason, for the entire day, I kept waiting for Dae to post the gameday thread and was so excited about the game.....that never came....because at 6pm my brain finally connected all of the information and realized it was not gameday. Mondays suck and so do the two day game breaks. Lol

Good write up. Totally excited for this game.

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Originally Posted by msusousaphone

Yesterday I knew it was Monday. I also knew we played on Tuesday. Yet for some reason, for the entire day, I kept waiting for Dae to post the gameday thread and was so excited about the game.....that never came....because at 6pm my brain finally connected all of the information and realized it was not gameday. Mondays suck and so do the two day game breaks. Lol

Good write up. Totally excited for this game.

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I felt weird about it too, I checked about 5 times to make sure I wasn't getting the date wrong for the next game because it felt weird to skip a day.

Haha. I had a joke in my head for a bit about putting out a search party across the pond for you.

I like our front court defense against Lillard, tonight. Maybe it's false bravado from when Rondo was here and we locked down a lesser seasoned Lillard but I'm feeling good about this.

They ARE a decent team, however. And it is hard to sweep a decent team.

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Originally Posted by msusousaphone

Haha. I had a joke in my head for a bit about putting out a search party across the pond for you.

I like our front court defense against Lillard, tonight. Maybe it's false bravado from when Rondo was here and we locked down a lesser seasoned Lillard but I'm feeling good about this.

They ARE a decent team, however. And it is hard to sweep a decent team.

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The issue is that I think a lot of people don't really remember what our defense was like in that Portland series. Yes, of course, Jrue was the key element of it, but if you rewatch some of those games you realise how vital Mirotic was to our trapping scheme, and how vital AD was pulling double duty as both rim protector and covering for Mirotic's man when he left to trap. Our team doesn't really have the personnel to do that, right now.

That said, we beat them once with Dame already this year and he was held in control. If Jrue can pull out the stops on him tonight, I don't see why we couldn't get the win. Don't need to sweep 'em, just 3 out of 4 will do it :hihi:

Alvin, play Melli!!!

Gentry said Brandon Ingram will try and see how his ankle feels in warmups. His ankle has some swelling so BI will let the team know how he’s doing after his pregame routine.

— Andrew Lopez (@_Andrew_Lopez) February 11, 2020

No Ingram in the starting lineup. pic.twitter.com/LINRoDe87L

— Andrew Lopez (@_Andrew_Lopez) February 12, 2020

^ Ingram be like: "If I was Zion, you'd rule me out!"

lmao

Lol

And Oleh Kosel just said on WWL that BI is out.

Why would they say out of the starting line-up.. Instead of saying he's not playing?

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Originally Posted by Nichols

Why would they say out of the starting line-up.. Instead of saying he's not playing?

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Not sure. Possibly because they hadn't yet decided for sure if he was going to be out but starting lineups have to be submitted at a slightly earlier time? No clue.

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Originally Posted by Pelicanidae

Not sure. Possibly because they hadn't yet decided for sure if he was going to be out but starting lineups have to be submitted at a slightly earlier time? No clue.

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Makes sense.. thx.

Jrue starts things off with an off-the-dribble jumper!

Curious fact: Jrue is shooting better on pull ups this year than on Catch and Shoot attempts.

Zion goes up, misses, goes back up, wrestles the offensive board from the hands of Hassan Whiteside, goes back up and gets fouled.

Zion starts 2/2 from the line. His FT shooting has been much better after his first 3 games.

Jrue gets the steal and then, in transition, sees a cutting ZION for a wide open dunk!

Jrue with a beautiful wraparound to Favors.

His passing is showing up again for the 2nd game in a row

lolwut