By the end of the first quarter of last game, we were so injured that we were able to use Zylan Cheatham and Josh Gray and still not exceed 10 players.
This means, unfortunately, that the injury report is so long that (in a return to Pelicans tradition) it can no longer be tweeted in text, and must instead be a picture.
Pelicans injury report - 11/17 vs. GSW: pic.twitter.com/0YFgZWdT8o
— Pelicans PR (@PelicansPR) November 17, 2019
That is correct. Ball, Hart, Miller, Okafor, and Zion are all out, guaranteed. Favors and Ingram are doubtful. Redick and Frank are questionable. That would mean that going into tonight, we would have 9 players injured (assuming Redick and Frank do not play). That's bad.
Luckily (I guess), we are taking on the only team in the NBA that's as injured as we are tonight. The Golden State Warriors are missing:
- Stephen Curry
- Klay Thompson
- D'Angelo Russell
- Damion Lee
- Alen Smailagic
- Jacob Evans
- Kevon Looney
That leaves them with Draymond Green, Omari Spellman, Jordan Poole, Eric Paschall, Willie Cauley-Stein, Glen Robinson III, Alec Burks, Ky Bowman and Marquese Chriss.
To me, that means that we should win, and our injuries shouldn't stop us. They only have 9 guys ready to play, including a 2 way guy. I count a total of maybe 4 NBA calibre players on that roster, and I'm being slightly generous to Omari Spellman there. We are at home. Yes, we played last night and yes, we lost, but for me that doesn't excuse this. We should be coming into tonight fiery: we need a win, and we have one of the most broken, beaten down teams in the NBA in our house to do it. They are the only team in the West to have a worse record than us.
Again, not going to go through all the stats because the Warriors are so reduced to nothing that it's not worth doing. They played a handful of games with Curry, who isn't here, and some more with Russell, who isn't here, so their overall season stats do not represent the actual team will we be taking on. They've lost 6 straight; let's make it 7.
#WBD