Game day in South Beach 🏝
— New Orleans Pelicans (@PelicansNBA) November 17, 2021
🏀: vs Miami
🕡: 6:30pm CST
📺: @BallySportsNO
📻: @ESPNRadioNOLA #Pelicans | @SmoothieKing pic.twitter.com/2fGtrxFNpG
Having come within a minute or two of winning game 3 last time out, only to be dashed at the final hurdle by almost 6 minutes of excruciatingly bad team offense, we now find ourselves taking on the Miami Heat.
The Heat are currently 9-5, having started the season super strong at 6-1. As you can tell from those numbers, however, they've gone 3-4 over their last 7 which might seem encouraging that they are perhaps going through some struggles. There is some truth in this, they certainly haven't been playing at their best for a few games now, but those losses were also against very good teams for the most part - Clippers and Utah, for example, who are both also 9-5. When it comes to how Miami have played against terrible teams, the answer is: quite well. They played OKC the other day and beat them by double digits.
All of this is expected; Miami have a top 10 defense and a top ten offense, which generally leads towards a lot of winning. They lead the league in rebounding, are top 10 in assists, and are top 3 in the league in both FTAs and FT%. Overall, they're a good team bordering on a great team, and we are always going to struggle against that, especially when we're still missing players.
One potential bright spot for us is the injury report. While we're still missing Daulton Hommes and Zion Williamson, the Heat have a number of big names on the report listed as questionable or out, including guys who missed their last game.
- Jimmy Butler (questionable, missed last game)
- Bam Adebayo (questionable, missed last game)
- Dewayne Dedmon (questionable)
- Marcus Garrett (questionable)
- Markieff Morris (out)
- Victor Oladipo (out)
While it's true that several of those names could easily return, our best hope of victory is if they don't. Please take the time to rest up responsibly, Bam and Butler.
Let's see how we do.