21st February - New Orleans Pelicans @ Portland Trailblazers - 23-32
And after a long long all-star break, we emerge to play our first game of the final stretch on this, my birthday. Today we take on the Portland Trailblazers, who are 25-31 right now and therefore slightly better than us. That said, we are currently 3-0 against the Blazers this year, and (for the second time this season when facing us) Damian Lillard is not going to be playing. So obviously this is a chance for a statement road win.
Especially important for our playoff realities, Memphis lost to the Kings yesterday and face a difficult upcoming stretch, where they face the Lakers and Clippers and Houston all in a row, all on the road. It's not impossible to imagine them losing all 3 of those games to create a 4 game losing streak; at the same time, we have Portland, Golden State, and Cleveland within our next 4 games. It's not unrealistic to expect us to go 3-1 over our next 4 games (maybe dropping the one to Lakers). That would close the gap between us considerably, as today we are only 5 games back.
#Pelicans Injury Report vs Portland
— New Orleans Pelicans (@PelicansNBA) February 21, 2020
Story: https://t.co/3Hv1Yr0yVw@MorrisBartLLC
There's the injury report. As you can see, we seem to be clear: Ingram is back, Zion is still a-go, and everything should be okay. Full strength, or close enough to it.
Because we've played Portland relatively recently, and because Lillard is out so the stats about Portland aren't really representative, I figured that rather than going over their stats for this game, I'd just check in and see where we are after all-star break. What are the Pelicans doing, at this point?
Well, we're 16th in ORtg, and 22nd in DRtg. This is an improvement; we've been as low as 28th defensively this season, and there have been times we've been at around 20 in offense. Still, it's not incredible, and we'll need to see that defense keep creeping up if we're going to make the run we want to make.
We are 17th in FG%, 4th in 3PT%, and 27th in FT%. We do take the most FGAs in the NBA, at 91.9 per game, so that boosts us up despite the overall mediocre efficiency, but still; that FT percentage was going to be a killer all year, and there are definitely a couple of games this season we've lost at the line.
We're 5th in total rebounds per game, 5th in assists, 10th in blocks, 15th in steals. All of this is very good. The downside is this: we average the 3rd most turnovers in the league, and 13th in fouls per game; that is, we tend to hurt ourselves. Part of that simply comes with pace, as we have the 2nd fastest pace in the league, but at the same time we all know that some of it just comes from mistakes.
That's where we are today though, with fewer than 30 games left to play; the final gauntlet is at hand. Take a win tonight, get some momentum going, and clean up as the season ends. Playoffs is a bonus but what I really care about is seeing some cohesion over this last leg.
#WBD
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Originally Posted by msusousaphone
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