Quick turnaround for #PelicansGameday in New York!
— New Orleans Pelicans (@PelicansNBA) April 7, 2021
🏀 at Brooklyn
🕡 6:30 p.m. CT
📺 @espn, @BallySportsNO
📻 100.3 FM @ESPNRadioNOLA @SmoothieKing | #WontBowDown pic.twitter.com/gjsbRmDQm0
Injury Report:
- Ingram (Questionable)
- Kira (Questionable)
- Hart (Out)
- NAW (Out)
Brooklyn Injury Report:
- James Harden (Out)
- Spencer Dinwiddie (Out)
- Tyler Johnson (out)
- Landry Shamet (Out)
So that's the injuries taken care of. As you can see, Kevin Durant is planned to make his return in this game and therefore he will be playing after about two months on the bench.
It will be interesting to see how we play tonight, shorthanded on a back to back. Of course an element of that will be alleviated if Ingram or Kira return and we can get a few minutes out of them to relieve pressure on guys who played heavy minutes last game, but that's up in the air right now.
The Brooklyn Nets are 35-16, and are the 2nd seed in the East. They, like us, have a bottom 5 defense (though their defense is actually more than a point better than ours, which is fairly significant - that's how bad ours is) and also pack a potent offense. In this case, even more potent than ours: third in the NBA. Behind that, the Nets have an 11-3 record since all-star break, which is certainly quite impressive. Not, however, an impenetrable record; after all, two games ago they dropped one to the Bulls. Of course, the Bulls made a lot of trades and they're a better team today than their record may suggest but it's still the case that Brooklyn is not unbeatable by any stretch of the imagination. Interestingly, we have a weapon that seems almost designed to target their lack of good interior defense in Zion Williamson - we'll see how that goes.
I'm looking for effort tonight, effort and improvement. A win would be the cherry on the top, but it's secondary to those other things. Let's see what happens.