January 28th - New Orleans Pelicans VS Denver Nuggets - 18-29

Friday nights in SKC 🏠

🏀: vs Denver
🕖: 7pm CST
📺: @BallySportsNO
📻: @ESPNRadioNOLA#Pelicans | @SmoothieKing pic.twitter.com/6iTYEgfnCX

— New Orleans Pelicans (@PelicansNBA) January 28, 2022

The Pels take on the Nuggets, tonight. The Nuggets are 26-21, and have won 4 of their last 5 including wins over Brooklyn and Clippers, but also two wins over the woeful Pistons. So it's a weird 4 games of winning, in terms of implications.

They're led by Nikola Jokic, who has missed some games this year, but who is following his MVP campaign with yet another campaign of pure excellence.

Jokic is averaging 26/14/7.5 on 65.2%TS, is leading the league in PER, WS, WS/48, BPM, and VORP (for the second consecutive year) and is also leading the NBA in EPM: The gap in EPM between Jokic (+9.4) and second place (Curry, +7.6) is 1.8. This is larger than the gap between Curry and 5th place (Giannis). He is having yet another incredible year. And he's doing it with improved defense as well; he's actually in the 99th percentile for defense so far this year, and his on/off is +22. Which is just absurd.

Of course, part of the reason his on/off is so gaudy is that the Nuggets are pretty awful without him. Missing both Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr for the entire year, and having dealt with a number of injuries to the already fairly shallow rotation through the season, Jokic has been left carrying a fairly middling team, which explains why the Nuggets are only slightly above .500 and why he's not going to repeat as MVP despite playing on that level.

Will the Nuggets recent winning streak continue in New Orleans, or can the Pels overcome an entire hospital ward's worth of injuries to pull one out? Who knows, let's find out.

When the heck did Cousins end up on Denver? I’ve really stopped paying attention to this season.

NAW would be pretty good if he could shoot at a decent consistency or %. Hernangomez is giving us 90% of Jonas. If we can package Jonas for something good, do it, and extend Billy.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Eman5805

When the heck did Cousins end up on Denver? I’ve really stopped paying attention to this season.

---

i said the same thing...last time i saw him he was playing against us for the bucks...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by donato

NAW would be pretty good if he could shoot at a decent consistency or %. Hernangomez is giving us 90% of Jonas. If we can package Jonas for something good, do it, and extend Billy.

---

im down with billy but we need jonas at center...we got to see jonas,,zion and ingram together as a big 3 and see how far they can take us...

Last night was a good basketball game. I can handle a loss like that when we are so undermanned. Willie is coaching very well.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by luigi modelo

Last night was a good basketball game. I can handle a loss like that when we are so undermanned. Willie is coaching very well.

---

I agree.

In fairness, Denver is also undermanned, but they have a top 5 player handling the offense and we don't, so it's not quite even despite the injury list.

A close loss to a playoff team is not something I'm getting upset over.

Willie is it man