13th January - New Orleans Pelicans @ Detroit Pistons - 14-26
For a variety of reasons, last game was a big big blowout loss. We had a number of issues regarding multiple injured starters, the second night of a back to back, being on the road, Boston being a good team. These issues were compounded by several of our remaining players having some of their worst games of the year. There were a couple of bright spots; Frank had what might be his best scoring game of the year, and Jax set a new career high. But I think we all agree that it was a bad night.
Tonight, we have some positives to look at as we go to face the 14-26 Detroit Pistons. Firstly, it's injuries: here's the report.
3 Pelicans listed as OUT, 3 are questionable for Monday's game at Detroit
— New Orleans Pelicans (@PelicansNBA) January 12, 2020
Injury Report: https://t.co/oeaM4ozMoZ
by @Jim_Eichenhofer
Redick, Jrue, and Favors are all listed as questionable rather than out: if even just any two of those three returned tonight, it would be a huge help. Redick's spacing and offensive threat opens everything up, and while we all agree that Jrue hasn't had his best year this season, there's no doubt that he's been one of the few players capable of actually running half-court offense on the roster. Favors, of course, has been the lynchpin of our defense whenever he's played, and missing him annihilates our cohesiveness on that end of the floor and forces Jax to play in disadvantageous situations.
Moving on from that though, let's look at Detroit. They have the same record as we do, but in reverse: we started off the year extremely rough but have been putting things together recently, even if it hasn't been perfect. The Pistons, on the other hand, started off the year okay but have gone 4-12 in the last month. Some of these losses have been expected (Utah, Lakers, Clippers, for example) but they've also lost to Chicago twice, dropped a game to Cleveland, and taken an L from Washington. So they're not great. Part of this has been the loss of Blake Griffin, who is now out for the season. It kinda sucks to see his career getting absolutely derailed; he was reaching his peak a few years back after finally getting over some injury struggles and now it's hitting harder than ever.
This is reflected in their ratings: 19th in Offensive, 21st in Defensive, their ratings are pretty poor. Not quite as poor as ours have been year-long, but not great at all. They're also a fairly slow team, running at the 22nd fastest pace in the NBA. Dead last in rebounding, 14th in assists, 20th in steals and 18th in blocks, Detroit doesn't come close to the top of the league in any of these stats. In fact, being 10th in FG% and 27th in FT%, they only get solidly inside the top 10 in a single measurement: 3pt%, where the Pistons sit at 4th in the NBA.
This game is a winnable one, especially if we get Jrue, Redick, and Favors back. If Favors stays out though, we're going to see minutes with Jax on Drummond. Now, everyone on this board knows how much I love Jax, but he's not ready to take that matchup on full-time yet. He weighs about 60lbs less than Drummond, and Drummond's an exceptional rebounder (15.9 per game this season!) against even fully physically matured opposition. If those guys remain out though, we are going to have real issues.
Let's go out and try and get a win before heading back to the Smoothie King Centre. Next game up after this is the 16th, where we face off at home against the Jazz, and we all know what we're hoping might happen in that game
#WBD
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Originally Posted by 13 - 3
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