May 1st - New Orleans Pelicans @ Minnesota Timberwolves - 28-35

[Pelicanidae]

Kicking off the month of May with #PelicansGameday!

🏀 at Minnesota
🕖 7 p.m. CT
📺 @BallySportsNO
📻 100.3 FM @ESPNRadioNOLA @SmoothieKing | #WontBowDown pic.twitter.com/VNuIDkp15i

— New Orleans Pelicans (@PelicansNBA) May 1, 2021

Still hovering 7 games below .500, tonight we take on the 20-44 Wolves who have, thus far, beaten us badly this season. We basically haven't shown up to play in any of those games so far and we've eaten dirt as a result of it; it's not even a talent or matchup issue, as in the first matchup neither KAT nor Dlo played and we still lost by double digits (120-110).

Let's find out what happens this time around.

[6warddude]

i thought we were done playing them for the season...well i guess we will do the reverse thing and beat them since we are short handed/injure lol....

[luckyman]

Minnesota has won 5 of their last 6. Including Utah twice and Golden St.

[Pelicanidae]

Good hands by Zion gets the steal

[Pelicanidae]

Anthony Edwards just finished April making the most threes a rookie has ever made in one monthand he's already made one tonight, and Lonzo didn't even bother moving towards him as a closeout. Awful blown play, lucky Antman missed.

[Pelicanidae]

Lonzo's plays this quarter have been either great (shooting really well, confident) or just horrifically bad (every time a screen happens) it's no in between.

[Pelicanidae]

Jax can't leave KAT that open on the perimeter. KAT is an all-time big man shooter.

[Pelicanidae]

Everyone being way too hesitant there. There's such a thing as too many passes.

[Pelicanidae]

Love Ingram's relocation for the shot there, tipped it out and then immediately got moving

[Pelicanidae]

Gorgeous baseline pass from Ingram to Bledsoe

[Pelicanidae]

Jax with the shooter's touch on the 10 foot floater

[Pelicanidae]

Ingram gets his pocket picked and then Kira gets stuck trying to defend a 2 on 1 in transition

Yikes

[Pelicanidae]

Really nice pick and pop action between Kira and Ingram results in the Ingram three, would like to see more of that when they're on the floor together

[Pelicanidae]

We are 7/13 from 3 in the first quarter, that's more than we made all of last game

We had 7 games last month where we didn't hit 7 threes all night

[Pelicanidae]

Oof, bad turnover from Zion. Skip pass picked off

[Pelicanidae]

Love that huge offensive board from Zion to get the fouls, and happy to see Kira taking that shot too

[Pelicanidae]

Jax moving really well on defense, caught a hard knee to the gut there though

Great dig on the drive by Zion also

[Pelicanidae]

Wild bounce pass through traffic from Zion, Kira catches it under the rim and gets FTS

[Pelicanidae]

Zion drops off a gorgeous pass to Jax, Jax is blocked but gets it back, gives his own lovely pass to Zion who goes up for it, gets fouled - no call - gets his own rebound and finishes

second efforts

[AusPel]

Zion needs to be called out about his completely apathetic defense, though. Offensive prodigy, but just awful on the other end

[Pelicanidae]

Great steal from Lonzo, and finish in transition

[Pelicanidae]

Zion needs to be called out about his completely apathetic defense, though. Offensive prodigy, but just awful on the other end

I think that's massively overstating it to be honest.

Zion's far from great on defense but he's far better now than he was at the start of the year. He's been solid so far most of tonight. He's not even the worst defender among our starting forwards, and there are people on this site who barely talk about him other than to imply he's the worst defender in the league.

That's born out in the stats too: EPM has him at basically +0.00 on defense (so exactly neutral), and both RAPTOR and BPM have him as slight negatives.

Interestingly enough, I rarely see this level of ''but what about the defense'' for guys like Damian Lillard who is legitimately one of the worst defenders in basketball.

[AusPel]

Lonzo might have the worst handle in the league

[AusPel]

I think that's massively overstating it to be honest.

Zion's far from great on defense but he's far better now than he was at the start of the year. He's been solid so far most of tonight. He's not even the worst defender among our starting forwards, and there are people on this site who barely talk about him other than to imply he's the worst defender in the league.

That's born out in the stats too: EPM has him at basically +0.00 on defense (so exactly neutral), and both RAPTOR and BPM have him as slight negatives.

Interestingly enough, I rarely see this level of ''but what about the defense'' for guys like Damian Lillard who is legitimately one of the worst defenders in basketball.

Probably because of the great energy he brought on the defensive end in college and the contrast in how he just lets guys fly by him with little effort in the big leagues

[Pelicanidae]

Probably because of the great energy he brought on the defensive end in college and the contrast in how he just lets guys fly by him with little effort in the big leagues

Sure but I think we have to be fair. You have to judge what you have, not what you wish you had. He's a slight negative on defense: he's also just hit 82 career games played, is 20, has never had a real off-season, and is carrying an absurd offensive load.

Are those excuses? No, not really, I still want him to improve and I think he can. But he's already gone from ''oh god what the hell'' on defense to just ''meh'' despite all of those things so I think we should give him the time to see if the improvement continues.

The majority of the time on defense, he's fine. Definitely breakdowns sometimes, and will probably always struggle with screening action because he is Large, but it's not like he's noteworthy levels of bad anymore.