4th March - New Orleans Pelicans @ Dallas Mavericks - 26-35
And so, with a loss to Minnesota, the Pelicans lose 2 consecutive games for the first time since February 2nd/4th. Unfortunately, that game was the easy one of the back to back. Tonight we play Dallas, who aren't a 17 win team; in fact, they're a 37 win team. We'll get to that.
This game is scheduled to begin at 2:30AM GMT; This correlates to 8:30PM CST
I would normally post the injury report here but I can't because it doesn't exist yet.
So, Dallas then. Dallas are 37-25, which is good. They've only won 4 of their last 7 though, and these 3 losses include losses to Atlanta and Chicago. That is to say, Dallas are not unstoppable.
But they are quite good. And that's a problem for the Pelicans. Recently, we've been cleaning up against bad teams. Obviously we lost against Minnesota last night, but aside from that we've beaten Cleveland (2x), Portland (2x), Golden State, Chicago (2x), Memphis (2x), Detroit and Sacramento since January 1st. That is, when we come up against a team we should definitely beat we have managed to do it, for the most part.
Our win record against actually decent teams? Much worse, as we all know.
We all remember that early in the season, Dallas was doing fantastically well; Luka was leading them to a historically great offense. This offense has dropped off a little, but only a little; their 117 ORtg still leads the league, and is still on pace for the best offensive efficiency of all time. It just isn't setting the record by quite as significant a margin as it was before. Their defense though? Almost as bad as ours. Our defense is 20th in the league now (actually an improvement over where it was most of the year) and Dallas' is 17th. Obviously that's still better than ours, and their offense is definitely offsetting it, but it does mean that we should be able to actually run some offense. If we feel like it. Y'know. Maybe.
Why are they so good? It's all Luka magic. He's 20 years old, and currently averaging 28.5/9.3/8.8. His defense still isn't great, but it's improved since last year. He's a master of pace, and plays with ridiculous levels of feel and control; he's arguably already a top 10 player in basketball at the age of 20, and he's in line to be in competition with Giannis and Zion for the next decade of NBA dominance.
Dallas are also not prone to beating themselves; they average about 12 turnovers a game, the 3rd fewest in the league, and they don't foul; they're in the bottom 10 for foul frequency.
Can this be won? Of course it can. Can it be won with us playing like we did yesterday? Not at all. If the guys want a win tonight, it's out there, but they'll have to bring their A game on the road. Last night's effort won't cut it; last time we played like that against Dallas, we got killed. I don't think I need to bring up the 130-84 loss, but I'm going to do it anyway.
So go out there and actually try. Play hard, with effort. Attack the rim hard and often. Porzingis is a good shot blocker but he's also frail; Zion should be moving him every play. Ingram needs to have a decent shooting night. We need Jrue to play aggressive. And we need Lonzo to keep up his recent good stretch. All that plus a little bit of bench input and some defense should do it. The only question is if the team's got the juice.
#WBD
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Originally Posted by AusPel
Ben Simmons shoots like 60% from 3 in warm-ups.
