Dreadful loss last game, and sadly, I have very little reason to think this one will be much different. Of course, anything is possible, but we're in the middle of a fairly lengthy losing streak, Favors still isn't back, our defense has been backsliding after it made some small progress two weeks back, and Alvin Gentry is still the coach.
Here's the injury report:
Derrick Favors (personal reasons), Darius Miller (right Achilles surgery), Kenrich Williams (left ankle sprain) and Zion Williamson (right knee scope) are OUT tomorrow vs. Dallas. https://t.co/fkbVkroSoQ
— Pelicans PR (@PelicansPR) December 2, 2019
As of right now, the New Orleans Pelicans have the league's 15th rated offense and the 25th defense. We are the league's 5th fastest team. We are 17th in rebounds, 11th in assists, 11th in steals, and 16 in blocks. We are 14th overall in FG% and 25th in FT%. We are top 10 in only one of the 4 Offensive Factors, and top 15 in only one of the 4 Defensive Factors. The only thing we're particularly good at is shooting, as we're 4th in the NBA in 3pt%.
We suck.
That's fine though, it only matters that your opponent sucks more, so do they?
We're playing the Dallas Mavericks tonight. They're 13-6 and have won 7 of their last 8. They're led by Slovenian magician, Luka Doncic, who is - at the age of 20 - averaging 30/10/9 on 62% TS. He is currently orchestrating, and I am not kidding, the single most effective offense in NBA history. Through 19 games, the Mavs Offensive Rating is 117: the current record for best regular season ORtg by a team is 115.9, held by the 2018-19 Golden State Warriors. Only 9 other teams have ever averaged an Offensive Rating of at least 115 for an entire year. Every single one of them won at least 53 games that season.
So unfortunately, we're not facing a pushover.
And even more unfortunately, the areas Dallas excels in are also areas of weakness for us. We're 17th in the NBA in rebounds, they're 4th. We are a bottom 20 team in both fouls and turnovers, Dallas is ranked 8th and 1st respectively in those categories. They're a top 10 3pt shooting team too, even if they aren't quite as good as us there. They're top 10 in all 4 Offensive Factors.
Basically we've got our work cut out for us. Of course we can win, and there are ways to do that. One is to make Doncic's life difficult; we have elite defensive talent on this roster, as shocking as that might be to anyone who's watched us this year, and there is the potential there to try and ruin Doncic's night. We're also a competent offense when we aren't devolving into iso-ball nonsense, so the Mavericks' relatively soft defense (20th in the NBA) should be something we can take advantage of.
We can win this. Stranger things have happened. But it will only happen if we put our foot down on defense, and actually play like a team instead of losing our brains when it gets close. Whether or not we have the fortitude to do that is another question. Hopefully the team shows some fight tonight.
#WBD