After a couple of day's rest and 2 consecutive victories against Chicago and Indiana, the Pelicans return home to take on fellow 8th seed hunting team, the Portland Trailblazers. Before I get into any stats or playoff implication talk, here's the injury report.
Zion Williamson (Left Ankle Sprain) is probable and
— New Orleans Pelicans (@PelicansNBA) February 10, 2020
Brandon Ingram (Right Ankle Sprain) is questionable for Tuesday's game vs Portland
Injury Report: https://t.co/O7Gehm3wpS#Pelicans | @MorrisBartLLC pic.twitter.com/q3pLGpHzkm
Zion's listed still, but it's as probable, and according to people who were there at practice yesterday (Andrew Lopez, for example) it seems like he's very very likely to play. Ingram is a slightly different question, still being ''questionable'', but he could return as well. Would be nice to get them both back, but even just Zion would be a big help.
Anyway, as for the Portland Trailblazers. What to say about them? I'm not going to run down all their individual stats and stuff because we've already played them twice. We are 2-0 against Portland so far this season: with a 4 game season series, a victory tonight would guarantee us the series win and therefore grant us the tiebreaker in the event that we end up with a tied record.
Portland has done everything recently behind Lillard going nuclear. His last 10 games have seen him score 60, 47, 50, 48, 51, and 42. Overall, Dame has averaged 40.8 points per game over his last 10, on 51/51/90 splits. Just absurdity. If it's any consolation prize though, he does seem to be cooling off; in his last 4 games, he's only averaging 31 on 45/40/90, which is still incredible, but obviously a little less so. He's still hot, but it appears we may be out of the heart of the supernova.
So there's been some drop off. Hopefully we can make that drop off continue. He was only active for one of the two games we've had against Portland so far this year, but in that game he was held to 18 points on 28% shooting. Would love to see a repeat performance.
Tonight is a big game in that sense. For anyone who is still tracking playoffs, this is an important one. Hopefully we can pull the win out of the bag, seal the series over Portland, give ourselves another win, and hand another L to one of our most serious rivals; at this point, it's unlikely the Wolves catch up, but Portland are ahead of us. So let's go out and get this W. #WBD