Quick flight home and we're back at it tonight!
— New Orleans Pelicans (@PelicansNBA) February 6, 2021
🏀 vs. Memphis
🕗 8 p.m. CT
📺 @FOXSportsNOLA
📻 100.3 FM @ESPNRadioNOLA @SmoothieKing | #WontBowDown pic.twitter.com/xQMM4cNHcW
Picked up a W last night on the road in Indiana, avenging our earlier season loss to the same team, and fittingly we took it from them narrowly. Just as they beat us.
Tonight we're back home to take on the 9-8 Grizzlies, currently sat in 9th seed of the West.
They are the 5th best defense in the league, led behind such defensive stalwarts as Brandon Clarke, Xavier Tillman, and some other guys I wish we'd drafted. Meanwhile, their offense is 22nd in the league. Admittedly a fairly large portion of their earlier season has been played without Ja Morant, who presents both a mild liability on defense and a big upgrade on offense, so these statistics may not be particularly representative of their current state of play.
The main thing that I would be concerned about tonight is turnovers. We've proven very susceptible to them so far this season despite a few good recent games, and the Grizzlies are #1 in the NBA in steals per game, and 3rd best in forcing opponent turnovers. We will have to be extremely careful tonight to try and keep the ball safe, and that goes for everyone: Zion, Ingram, Lonzo, and Bledsoe have all had some heavy turnover games this year so far, and even low minutes guys like NAW have managed to cough it up at alarming rates. If we do that, we hand them the avenue to bolstering their weak offense: tons more opportunities.
I'm unsure what to think about our perimeter defense this game. It's looked better recently but has been overall very poor this season, and the Grizzlies are a team with night-and-day shooters. Their guys are either struggling hard, like Dillon Brookes at 30.1% and Ja Morant at 26.5%, or they're shooting the roof off the place like Gorgui Dieng (51.4% from 3 on 2.5 a game) or another guy I wanted us to draft, Desmond Bane (50.8% on 3.8 per game). This could all go very right for us tonight, or very very wrong.
One thing I'm not overly worried about is minutes. While Ingram hit 39 minutes last game, Zion played only 31, Adams only 30, Bledsoe only 27, and nobody off the bench hit 25 minutes of play. That should mean most guys are ready to go for a full game's worth, even if those minutes creep up to 35 or so: the only guy I'd be watching is BI. Not really fair to play someone 40 minutes a night on a back to back, imo.
I think this is more winnable than our records imply. Go in there confident, put the clamps on some people, keep showing that defensive improvement, and watch Jonas Valanciunas try to defend Zion on drives.