Herb nails the corner three off the Zion drive and dish.
It's just motoring along offensively right now.
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Herb nails the corner three off the Zion drive and dish.
It's just motoring along offensively right now.
Basketball.
Currently shooting 60% from the field...45.5% from 3....91% from the line.
With this offense and HEALTH we can do anything....
Herb with another corner 3, this time contested.
If he's going to shoot the corner 3 well this year, it's all over.
Hoping we can cut out shots like that, where possible.
BI with the finish
Ingram with a huge putback off the Hawkins miss
Defense falling apart a bit with all this rushing, see if they can bring that back in after the timeout
Incredibly broken play but it ended with BI FTs so I'll take it I guess?
A 41 point second quarter for Magic...NOT GOOD. Three players in our starting lineup cannot play defense off the dribble. I see players doing a lot of chasing and playing flat-footed.
Halftime
Zion: 12pts, 5rbs, 5asts on 72.6%TS - 15 minutes
BI: 14pts, 4rbds, 2asts, on 57.9%TS - 17 minutes
CJ: 12pts, 1rbds, 1asts on 66.2%TS - 16 minutes
JV: 7pts, 11rbds, /2asts on 57.0%TS - 18 minutes
Herb: 11pts, 5rbds, on 78.1%TS - 16 minutes
Don't expect too many second half minutes from these guys, they're already coming close to that 20 minute limit mentioned yesterday.
Pros from first half: great ball movement, better general shot profile, offense looks great with Zion at the 5, Kira looked way better than last year, defense was good in spots.
Cons from first half: Defense was also awful in spots (though funnily enough, not always when you'd expect it), and there's clearly a bit of scheme confusion on defense in those moments; guys sometimes look like they aren't sure where to be.
First half impressions:
— Shamit Dua (@FearTheBrown) October 11, 2023
- Zion is so clearly the best player on the Pelicans it's not close. And he's probably at 50% of where he was at last December.
- their defense is driven by their offense. When they get buckets, they also get stops.
- I like how JV was involved
So happy to finally see EJ out there
He's had a few moments here and there but overall Kira looks so much better than last year it's incredible
I know this will come as no surprise to anyone, but a Pelicans team with no Zion, BI, JV, CJ, or Trey is having trouble scoring.
Dyson looking a little better as this goes on
They got some stuff to work on.
Only really troublesome takeaway were the 2nd quarter turnovers. That's besides the obvious ongoing problem. Lack of bigs.
The defense was awful. Three of our five starters matching up with their man on the perimeter were flat-footed, and then chased them all the way to the goal in a lay up drill.. When the other players tried to rotate to cover for the bad defense, the Magic had wide open looks from deep. Luckily, the Magic didn't shoot well from deep.Originally Posted by luckyman
Anyone who thinks this team can afford to get rid of JV is crazy.
I know its only the first game of pre-season, but its also your opponents first game of preseason, too.
i know we held our other big out tonight but i dont think im going to like zion being the backup center.....the west is too stacked with bigs and smart teams are not going to play down to zion...they're going to stay big and force us to go 6'10 up...
I did notice the defense but that has to be because they don’t want to get hurt, right? That’s what I’m going with. Lol
then you have 3 games in 5 days...
The defense was good when the offense was good - scoring created the opportunity for the defense to get back and set. The problem is when we missed and they were able to get out, especially in transition, while we had guys back in the paint attempting to rebound. That's an issue but it's also not a worldbreaking problem - we were a top 6 defense last year (top 5 before the end of season collapse) so I have precedent to expect that even if it won't be the prettiest, it will be serviceable.
It's going to look rough in preseason because half the people playing are not real NBA players, the ones that are don't play real minutes, they're getting used to a new style and playing into shape for some.
The only person on the team who looked like they could play 35 minutes of real NBA ball right now was Herb. Everyone else clearly has some rust to shake off, even BI and JV who both played international ball this summer.
Transition defense wasn't the glaring issue. The halfcourt defense was; it was 'Swiss Cheese'. #1, #3, and #17 were caught flatfooted all night in the halfcourt (and it's not like we haven't seen this from all of them in the past). # 14 was barely adequate and Herb is. well...Herb. This kind of defense will NEVER win in the postseason.....NEVER!!! (No matter how good the offense supposedly is)
This is what I noticed. Seemed to be a complete lack of effort.
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