Pelicans Crumble in the 4th Quarter Against the Spurs
San Antonio Spurs 112 - New Orleans Pelicans 97
The Pelicans enter tonight’s match-up after securing their 8th win of the season against the Detroit Pistons on Friday night in a 109 to 93 victory. The Spurs are a great team to go up against as they are a divisional opponent for New Orleans and also have a lot of young talent especially at the guard position with Dejounte Murray, Derrick White, and Lonnie Walker IV. San Antonio enters the night with no injuries from their opening night roster. Free agent acquisition Zach Collins remains out with his foot injury that occurred before the season even started. Speaking of foot injuries, recent news of Zion Williamson’s basketball activities being shut down from foot soreness took over the headlines over the weekend for the NBA. The Pelicans said in a statement that Zion underwent additional medical imaging after experiencing the persistent foot soreness, and the results showed that the healing in the fifth metatarsal bone has regressed. This specific bone fracture is titled a Jones fracture which is what was originally reported, but I did hear other reports that Zion experienced an avulsion fracture which is similar but usually occurs around the ankle. The team news and coverage of this injury has been beyond odd. Besides the Zion news, Kira Lewis Jr. sadly tore his ACL and suffered a grade 2 MCL sprain in the Wednesday match-up against the Denver Nuggets. I felt like Kira was finally starting to get in a grove with his shooting and driving. The timing for this injury is pretty bad as well since Kira will likely not return from his recovery to around this time of the year next season. At that point, Kira will be in his third season and will have contract extension discussions after that third season. He will not get much time to show how much he has improved while also missing quality playing time which seemed like he was likely to receive more minutes with his recent good play. With the depressing injury news out of the way, let’s get into the game.
The game started out with the Pelicans guards going under almost all of the on-ball screens as the Spurs guards are not known for their shooting ability. However, Dejounte Murray made his first two jumpers from the mid-range area, but the Pelicans stuck with this game plan for the entire game which I did not mind from a scheme poin of view. Spurs center Jakob Poeltl is a very underrated center in my opinion, maybe simply because he is on the Spurs. He sets great screens where he absolutely killed Satoransky on one play that basically put Valanciunas in a two-on-one position in the halfcourt. On the next possession, Poeltl sets up for another pick and roll where Sato was the on-ball defender. Sato tries to anticipate the screen where he jumps in front of the screen almost like he is trying to ice the ball handler, but since San Antonio didn’t have anyone in the stong side corner, Poeltl and the ball handler both start driving to the rim putting JV in another two-on-one situation. Defensively, Poeltl’s presence was known from the very beginning of the game. He was fighting with Jonas in the post, getting his arms in front and denying the pass. The Spurs coaching staff probably know New Orleans has no passing, and no one could complete the lob pass over Poeltl as they never sent help when Jonas was essentially being fronted. He also interrupted a Devonte Graham layup early in the game when Graham had a head of steam going to the rim. Willy Hernangomez did check into the first quarter with just over 6 minutes left at JV was experiencing some foul trouble, and Willy continues to be a great pick and roll man when he is on the court.
It was great to watch Josh Hart be back in the lineup and look 100% healthy. When he puts his head down and drives hard to the hoop, that creates some of our best offense not only because of his finishing ability. In the first half, he had three drives in a row that lead to a wide open 3-pointer for Graham in the corner, a nice layup over Poeltl, and an and-one dunk. Nickeil had a pretty good game especially if you only watched the first three quarters of the game. He started off the game knocking down his first two 3-point attempts, both on catch and shoot attempts. After he hit his first two shots, he then takes a tough fading mid-range shot early in the shot clock which he just has to get out of his system. He is about to make my “feet has to be set” list of shooters like Lonzo Ball was. I always told people that when Lonzo Ball had his feet set, he was basically automatic from 3-point range, but anytime he tried to shoot a stepback jumper or anything of the sort, there was almost no chance of the shot going in. I might have to have the same mindset when watching NAW with his shot selection. He did have another drive to the rim that lead to a wide open Garrett Temple 3-pointer that just rimmed out. Trey Murphy played 5 minutes, and it did not go well. He only scored 2 points on three shots including air-balling one of his two 3-point attempts. He also gave up two backdoor cuts to Doug McDermott on back to back possessions. Trey has to take advantage of these minutes Willie gives him because after this stint, I cannot blame Willie Green for not wanting to play him when you are trying to win. I already went over some of Satoransky’s on-ball defensive woes, but he did make some nice off-ball plays tonight. Sato got one steal after swiping the ball out of Poeltl’s hands right after catching an entry pass into the post. He had another great rotation from the weak side to block Dejounte Murray’s drive, but Murray just hit him with a nice step through move that Sato was not ready for as he was closing in so quick. It’s the thought that counts I guess. For the first three quarters, the Pelicans’ bench played much better than the Spurs and outscored San Antonio 30 to 24 overall for the game.
Before we go into the details of the fourth quarter, I want to highlight two more players. Brandon Ingram was great tonight. He finished with 27 points, 7 rebounds, and 9 assists shooting 11 for 25 from the field but 0 for 4 from 3-point range. His percentages kind of went down later in the game when it was more out of hand, but I thought this was BI’s best isolation game of the season. Might have stemmed from going against these long guards that just are not long or tall enough to guard him in the mid-range area. He just always looked in control and was never rushed anything. I still would like to see more off-ball action to get him the ball in the post instead of all of the pick and rolls and isolations he has to run from the perimeter, but more of that action did occur in the second half compared to the first. The last player I want to discuss, who probably had his worst game of the season, is Devonte Graham. He finished the game with 8 points on 3 for 11 shooting and only 2 assists, and it just seemed like he was not even on the court. Offensively, a lot of his looks were pretty good that he just did not knock down finishing the first half only 1 for 7, the one being the corner 3-pointer Josh Hart created for him. But defensively, he could not keep up with the San Antonio’s guards. He could not keep any of them in front of him, and when he would go under the on-ball screens, he was not hustling to get to the other side and meet the ball handlers before they could make a play.
Let’s get into the much anticipated fourth quarter collapse. Josh Hart gambled on a pass that knocked the ball loose towards the halfcourt line, so on the next defensive possession, Hart gambles again on a pass that was less likely he pokes away which leads to an and-one score for the Spurs. Next possession, Graham gets beat by Derrick White on the perimeter for an easy layup. Then, New Orleans comes back after a commercial break where Temple throws the inbounds pass to the Spurs that leads a Poeltl dunk. The camera did not actually catch the pass for me to see what exactly happened, but Temple was talking to Graham basically asking him what was he doing. Bally Sports never showed a replay of the inbounds pass either. Guess I can’t blame them. Then, New Orleans somehow survives a possession where Poeltl gets two offensive rebounds leading to some decent 3-point attempts. Offensively during this time, anytime the Pelicans threw the ball in the paint, the Spurs guards would sneak over from the weak side and steal and poke the ball free from whoever was trying to catch it. The Pelicans come out of another timeout where Herb Jones throws an entry pass to Brandon Ingram that hits the backboard for another turnover. Herb had another possession a little later where he pushed a fastbreak and attempted a layup over two defenders that obviously did not go in. Graham was benched for Sato with 6:22 left in the fourth quarter but was eventually subbed back in with 3:19 left in the game. A funny moment, as Sato is coming off the court, Antonio Daniels says he wanted to give his thoughts and prayers to Kira Lewis for his injury. It almost seemed like Daniels was like Sato and our point guard situation in general has been so bad tonight, he prays Kira can eventually comeback and help this position for us in the future. Second year man out of Florida State, Devin Vassell, ruined one New Orleans offensive possession after Brandon Ingram received an entry pass. Ingram caught it in the post but tried to just slowly walk out of the post towards the perimeter, and Vassell poked it free almost to the hash mark. By the time, Ingram gathered the ball back, the shot clock was too low to create any kind of good shot. Kind of thought this was BI just being exhausted instead of lazy. During Sato’s brief stint late in the fourth, he had such a weird offensive possession that I did not want to re-watch it or even try to explain what he was trying to do in this post. Valanciunas missed a lot of short bunnies at the rim in the second half that I think just stems from him being so tired in these games as he has to do so much when he is on the floor. And finally, Graham had the worst turnover of the game after he cut into the mid-range corner area, he makes a jump pass to the opposite corner when no one was even standing there. No idea who or what he saw to make that pass, but it was a thing. The Pelicans entered the fourth quarter only down by one point but were outscored 29 to 15 in the fourth quarter which also included 6 of their 14 total turnovers from the game.
If it was not obvious enough, the first three quarters were fine but an absolute collapse in the fourth quarter lead to this Pelicans loss. It was pretty apparent to me that a lead guard was needed to just slow the offense and everyone down, and no one stepped up and took that role. On paper, however, it is not that surprising that this current Pelicans roster lost to the Spurs. Their “young” guards have way more experience than ours and are much more defensive minded which is easier to project than our inconsistent and streaky offensive guards. The Spurs rank 7th in the league with 12.8 turnovers per game and 8th in the league with 8.3 steals per game. The Pelicans rank 21st in the league with 14 turnovers per game which was hit because of that poor fourth quarter performance. Also, Jakob Poeltl is a good match-up against Valanciunas who is a big part of our offense. Anyways, New Orleans does not play again until Wednesday night at 7 o’clock at Oklahoma City. Hopefully the Pelicans can get payback against the Thunder for their loss earlier in the season.