Pelicans face a young but feisty Oklahoma City Thunder team that is missing one of its young pieces, Lu Dort. Lu Dort is out with a left ankle sprain he suffered Sunday night against the Dallas Mavericks. Dort made a name for himself in the NBA bubble being the Thunder’s main defender against James Harden when OKC made the playoffs with Chris Paul in his lone season with the franchise. The Pelicans enter the night with no different injuries from their last game. Let’s get into this wild game.
The Pelicans started the game off very sloppy with 6 turnovers in the first half, 3 by Josh Hart. Hart did start out the game very aggressive, putting his head down and attacking the rim. It was odd how little Jonas Valanciunas was involved offensively especially in the first half. He faced former New Orleans Pelican Derrick Favors as they basically matched minutes throughout most of the first half. Brandon Ingram also had a nice overall game and used more off-ball action tonight compared to the previous games to get him going offensively. A staple move since Willie Green has taken over as head coach has been the elbow cut to get BI or guards the ball in the mid-range area. Satoransky was the first sub off of the bench, and he finished the night with a team worst -21 in 11 minutes. He just played awful all-around. Sato didn’t make a single field goal, his 2 point came off of a pair of free throws. He mishandled a pass on a 3 on 2 fastbreak that was labeled as one of Josh Hart’s turnovers. He stumbled twice defensively, once by Darius Bazley and the other by rookie guard Tre Mann. Josh Giddey, the 6th overall pick and Rookie of the Year candidate, got an easy bucket off of a backdoor cut on Sato, as well. Speaking of backdoor cuts, Tre Mann hit Nickeil with a backdoor cut that lead to Garrett Temple being on a poster. Aaron Wiggins had a putback dunk after Brandon Ingram didn’t box out the other rookie on this team from Maryland. This Thunder team plays hard, they are just missing the overall talent which is where they want to be anyway.
A couple more specific plays I want to point out. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander had Brandon Ingram one on one in the low post and pumped fake BI out of his shoes for an easy bucket. At the end of the first quarter, no Pelican rushed for a loose ball that lead to a wide open 3 for the Thunder. NAW threw a pass to nowhere when he expected Garrett Temple to be standing at the spot he threw the ball, NAW just never looked to where he was passing. To end the second half, you could tell there was little to no communication defensively that lead to a big run to close out the second half for the Thunder who led at halftime 51 - 45.
To start the second half, Jonas was allowed to actually eat and be fed the ball in the post for a while. The Pelicans started the second half with a 10 - 0 run a built up a decent lead. However, Willie Green put a lineup out at the end of the first quarter and third quarter that was Billy, BI, NAW, Temple, and Sato. This lineup is just not good enough to keep a lead. I would rather have some other starter, preferably JV or Hart, to just get the talent level higher. I would probably choose Hart since JV already has such a high minutes total so far this season, and Hart pushes the ball in transition and has improved his playmaking so much more this season.
In the fourth quarter, Garrett Temple had two brutal 3-shot fouls on Mike Muscala that kept this game close going down the stretch. I thought Willie Green was going to go with a small lineup at the end of the game with 7 minutes left but only kept this lineup on the floor for less than 2 minutes. Brandon Ingram had a great closing out the game effort. He scored on three possessions in a row: a drive off of a pick and roll with Valanciunas, a fastbreak dunk after a terrible passing turnover by another Thunder rookie Jeremiah Robinson-Earl, and a cut along the baseline with an off-ball screen that gave BI an easy post fade.
To explain the wild ending to this game, New Orleans fouled the Thunder up by 3 so they could not tie the game. Shai makes both free throws, and Willie Green calls his second to last timeout to advance the ball. The first out of bounds play the Pelicans run didn’t give Josh Hart a comfortable pass so he uses the last timeout. Green draws up a different out of bounds play that works and gets BI the free throws. Before the free throws, BI was 9 for 13 and was a little frustrated with some of his previous misses, but he makes both free throws to put the Pelicans back up 3. The Pelicans finished the game 24 for 36 from the free throw line when they have been one of the better free throw shooting teams in the league this season. So the Thunder get the inbounds pass to SGA while the Pelicans were switching everything defensively before the inbounds pass. SGA gets Garrett Temple on him who tries to foul Shai before he can get the shot up. It looked like Temple did make contact with Shai while he was loading up for the shot, but the ref didn’t call the foul and Shai ties the game on the deep 3. The team let the ball roll around on the court before Josh Hart eventually picks it up, inbounds it to Devonte Graham who is cutting across the court, and Graham banks in the 60 foot heave to win the game. An absolutely wild ending to the game that gives Graham his second game winning shot of the season.
That win puts the Pelicans current record at 9-21 and places them in 14th place over the Thunder who are now last in the western conference. The New Orleans Pelicans next game is Friday night at 7:00 at home against the Milwaukee Bucks who will be missing two-time MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo. The Bucks have a few players in health and safety protocols including Giannis. Also, Jrue Holiday will be returning to New Orleans with a much larger crowd than his first return, hopefully…
Anyways thanks for stopping by.