Prepping for back to back home games! 🙌#WontBowDown | @SeatGeek pic.twitter.com/2hJkGYu1MF
— New Orleans Pelicans (@PelicansNBA) March 26, 2021
Our first game in a few days, and our first game post-deadline; not that the deadline changes anything for us, given what our move was.
We're taking on the Denver Nuggets, who did make a pretty sizeable change in shipping out Gary Harris and some ballast to bring back Aaron Gordon, while also acquiring Javale McGee to bring off the bench.
As a result of this, it's probably not too fair to take too much of the Nuggets' existing statistics to heart for this game: they've lost some guard production but replaced it with an athletic forward, their starting lineup has just changed, and their already-defensively-good bench has just been given an upgrade (arguably).
That said, the Nuggets are currently 26-18, 5th in the West and in a good position to potentially take a top 4 seed depending on what happens with LA. Jokic is, in my view, the current MVP favourite; he's averaging 27/11/9 on 57/42/87 splits.
Jokic leads the league in:
- PER
- WS
- WS/48
- BPM
- VORP
- EPM
- Estimated Wins Added
- RAPTOR (and RAPTOR Wins Above Replacement)
It's just a truly ridiculous season, and contrary to popular belief, his defense isn't terrible this year either. It's not great but he grades out as a clear and comfortable plus on the defensive end in DBPM, DRAPTOR, D-EPM, and so on.
This game will be a hard one, but it should hopefully be a fun one as well. I look forward to watching it, and we'll see what happens beyond that!