Last game we managed to pick up a win, making sure we didn't spend that 3 game homestand entirely winless. Jrue had a good game, Lonzo was at his passing best, and Zion logged in a career first double double. That's great! Tonight, though, we head off on the road for just one game, to grab a cup of coffee in Cleveland.
First though, the injury report:Kenrich Williams and Darius Miller only players listed on Pelicans' injury report for Tuesday's game at Cleveland.
— New Orleans Pelicans (@PelicansNBA) January 27, 2020
Report: https://t.co/66jHQTdvoH | @MorrisBartLLC pic.twitter.com/eEyaTFyknE
Nothing really of note: Kenrich is still out injured, but he's pretty much the only one. Miller, also, but he's been out all year and probably will remain out for the rest of the year too, so nothing surprising.
So, Cleveland Cavaliers. Cleveland are currently 13-34, having picked up a win last night against Detroit; yes, that means tonight is the second night of a back to back for them. That victory ended a 7 game losing streak for the Cavs, who have gone 3-11 so far in 2020.
Everything we've been bad at this year, they've been worse. Our offense has disappointed, floating somewhere between 15th and 20th for most the year: Cavs are 23rd in ORtg. Our defense has been terrible, somewhere between 24th and 27th most of the year: Cavs are 29th in DRtg. They are also 24th in pace, which doesn't bode well for their ability to run with us consistently. Here are just the blanket, basic stats for the Cavs. Look how bad this is.
3PT%: 34.5%, 23rd in the league
FG%: 45.1%, 22nd
FT%: 76.2%, 20th
Rebounds: 44.1, 20th
Assists: 21.7, 27th
Steals: 6.8, 25th
Blocks: 3.2, 30th
Turnovers: 16.3, 2nd most in the league
Meanwhile, they give up the second highest opponent's FG% in the league, and the 4th highest opponent's 3PT%. They are not a very good basketball team.
A lot of this just comes from their complete lack of effective and consistent playmaking. Darius Garland is currently leading their team in assists, with 3.6 per game. And he's improved recently: if you go back six weeks or so, it was worse than that. Nobody else averages more than 2.8 assists per game (that's Kevin Love). Colin Sexton's ability to run an offense with any kind of confidence or clarity of purpose is staggeringly lax, and a lot of that will be the story of this game: can we use their relatively poor offense as an opportunity to have a good defensive night out? That would be great.
On a tangentially related note, one thing that will be interesting this game is to see the Zion matchup against Tristan Thompson. Thompson isn't some kind of extreme defender, but he is very very strong and is a solid rebounder. While I'm personally pretty sure that Zion will be able to score on him without too much issue, it is interesting to think about.
Realistically though, this is a game we should walk through. This should be a win. Whether it will be or not is another question, and teams can always pull off upsets; nobody on the team should be thinking this is a night off. But it should end in a W.
#WBD