October 9th - New Orleans Pelicans @ Chicago Bulls - 1-0
After a thrilling start to the pre-season with a dominant win over the up and coming Atlanta Hawks, we come to our second outing of the pre-season with a visit to Chicago.
The entire team had a pretty positive outing in our first game, with Zion showing off thunderous dunks, NAW using his limited minutes to showcase why he deserves regular season appearances, Ingram improving massively after halftime to turn a terrible night into quite a good one, and Jrue carving up the entire Atlanta defense in no time at all. Lonzo threw passes, and his reworked jumpshot actually looked pretty good, carrying him to a respectable 37.5% on the night: if he can keep that range up for a full season, that would be extremely impressive and very helpful.
Tonight we take on Chicago. I'm not going to try and dig out where they rank among all pre-season teams in pace or ORtg or something because the sample size of 1 game is not worth it. What I will do is discuss a few of their promising figures.
Chicago drafted Coby White this year, with the 7th overall pick, and he had a pretty rough outing in his first game against the Bucks. He put up 12 points, but only shot 30% from the floor, which isn't great. Still though, he's fast and difficult to defend due to that speed. Having lengthy, smart defenders like Lonzo and Jrue will help corral him.
In terms of front court, the Bulls started last game with a combination of Lauri Markkanen and Cristiano Felicio. Lauri is good, and has rim protection abilities as well as a solid three ball: he shot 50% on 8 attempts in the Bucks game, and finished with 14 and 5 in only 22 minutes. By comparison, Felicio is not good at all. He's big, and he's extremely limited in range so he's a big body that lives by the rim and therefore collects rebounds and tip ins, but he cannot defend in space whatsoever, is a poor passer with dreadful feel, and frankly should not be starting. Once the regular season comes around, I don't think he will be.
Zach Lavine can score.
As for our own team, here's the outlook:
Alvin Gentry added that the Pelicans weren’t planning on holding out any players tonight.
— Andrew Lopez (@_Andrew_Lopez) October 9, 2019
Some may play limited minutes but no one is set to be held out completely.
Sounds like pretty much everyone is a full go, with minute's restrictions in mind. That makes sense: Zion was the only player to exceed 26 minutes last game, and even he only played 29. That's what we want in pre-season. Nobody should be playing more than about 25 minutes, 30 at an absolute push. If someone hits 35 minutes in a pre-season game, something is not right.
So, here we go again, taking on the Chicago Bulls! Next game up, the Pelicans come back to New Orleans and have their pre-season Home game, so hope everyone's excited for that too.
Let's go, get the win, and have fun! #WBD
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Originally Posted by Taker597
