First game of 2024 💪
— New Orleans Pelicans (@PelicansNBA) January 2, 2024
🏀: vs Nets
🕖: 7:00 pm CT
📺: @BallySportsNO
📻: @995WRNO#Pelicans | @SmoothieKing pic.twitter.com/AzXHkFAgeH
We begin a fairly difficult stretch of the season over our next 10 games, playing the majority of them on the road and against some tough opponents. This, however, is another game on our current homestand and a chance to bolster the record before the road games begin.
Brooklyn are 15-18, having gone 3-12 over their last 9 after a fairly positive start. They're bottom 6 in DRtg and just above league average in ORtg. This is a team that cannot defend anything but can score competently, so the strategy needs to be simply overwhelming their porous defense while keeping a robust enough defense to prevent runs. I repeat, they are a competent offense in 2024: this means you will not just stop them scoring entirely. You have to focus on being decent on defense and then hammering their terrible defense.
Of course, they have a number of good players on the roster - Nic Claxton is a good player and defender, Mikal Bridges has shown he can be a dynamic scorer, and Cam Thomas is a highlight machine because of his propensity to go off. What is often excluded from the highlights is that his defense is among the very worst in the league, and he can be a black hole on offense at times - it would make sense if we attempted to attack him as a mismatch whenever he's on court.
There's a lot of room for victory in this game. Brooklyn aren't a completely dead dog, but they're far from a juggernaut - at home, the Pelicans should be looking for a win here.
Let's see how it goes.