February 5th - New Orleans Pelicans @ Indiana Pacers - 8-12
Kicking off the first night of our back-to-back on the road in Indy ⤵️
— New Orleans Pelicans (@PelicansNBA) February 5, 2021
🏀 at Indiana
🕡 6 p.m. CT
📺 @FOXSportsNOLA
📻 100.3 FM @ESPNRadioNOLA @SmoothieKing | #WontBowDown pic.twitter.com/yg6Tdy4Kqh
First game back out on the road after a frankly disappointing homestand, and we're in Indiana to face the Pacers.
The Indiana Pacers are 12-10 and currently sit at 5th in the East.
They have the league's 9th best offense and the 15th best defense. They rank top ten in assists, blocks, steals, and field goal percentage. On the other hand, they suck at rebounding (28th) and foul reasonably often (19th) and their opponents shoot 39.3% from 3, the third worst perimeter defense in the league by that metric.
We already played Indiana once, and they won by 2. We know that when we play well, we're capable of turning a game with them into a close one. The question is just whether we're going to actually bother to do that or not. Last game was a good game in a bunch of ways: the defense looked better than it had for a while, led by probably Zion's best defensive game in terms of fundamentals since the start of the year (he's had games with gaudier steal/blk numbers) and it also saw Ingram defending at his best as well. Meanwhile, Lonzo shot quite well from 3 and the team ran a bunch of offense through Zion in the first half, rather than trying to make Lonzo do it in the halfcourt.
The result of that was good and we turned Phoenix into paste.
The aim tonight is, of course, to do very similar things: shoot well, yes, keep the defensive intensity, yes, and also give Zion on ball reps.
If we do that, we can win. So let's do that.
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Originally Posted by 6warddude
