It's #PelicansGameday!
— New Orleans Pelicans (@PelicansNBA) January 17, 2021
🏀 at Sacramento
🕗 8 p.m. CT
📺 @FOXSportsNOLA
📻 100.3 FM @ESPNRadioNOLA @SmoothieKing | #WBD pic.twitter.com/Rn2FrCMQhJ
5 game losing streak hurting right now, but hey, at least we're taking on the 5-8 Sacramento Kings today so there's a chance for us to snap that streak and attempt to stem the tide of losses. Hey, I said a chance, not a guarantee.
The Kings are 2-7 in their last 9 games after starting off the year 3-1, so they've actually had a fairly similar trajectory to us so far. Their problem however, is the inverse of ours: so far we are 11th in DRtg but only 23rd in ORtg: by comparison the Kings are 11th in ORtg, but dead last among the entire league in DRtg, at 30th.
At the same time, they currently have a lot of injuries on the books: Hassan Whiteside is questionable for this game, as is Marvin Bagley. Now, neither Whiteside nor Bagley are particularly good players (in fact, Bagley is the worst 3rd year player in the NBA by Total Points Added this year so far, which is funny because Luka is Number 1 and the Kings passed on Luka for Bagley), but the fact remains that they are inside presences. Whiteside, at least, is 15 minutes of shot blocking and rebounding that the Kings now do not have. With only Richaun Holmes and Nemanja Bjelica to shore up the interior, tonight should be an exhibition of Pelicans charging at the rim. NAW, Zion, and Ingram should be at the basket damn near every play. Teams the Kings play shoot 58% from 2 so far this season, the highest in the league, and we should be taking advantage of that with our dominant interior scoring upside.
The Kings don't really rebound (26th in the league) or get steals (28th), and they're only average shot blockers (12th) right now, and they're only very slightly better than us in terms of FT shooting (27th, when we're 28th). What keeps them afloat is that they don't really turn it over much (10th) and they're fairly efficient from the floor and from 3 (12th in both). Plus, while they don't convert the FTs often, they are Number 1 in the NBA in FT attempts per game, which helps.
One thing that the Kings do have, which is fun, is Tyrese Haliburton, who I (and several others) really liked before the draft. My concern with him is that I thought he had to go to a team which already had a lead guard, so that his off-ball and secondary playmaking abilities could show up and maximise his value. In De'Aaron Fox, he has exactly the partner he needs, and has converted his college success into really promising early season play for the Kings. So he's someone both to watch out for and to enjoy watching.
Hopefully tonight we can have a dominant scoring session in the paint, and try and shore up some of the slipping defense we've had recently. The Kings are one of the few soft spots in this current stretch of games and if we want to come out of January in anything even resembling okay shape, we need to win games like this.
Let's go and get it.