Things don’t look great for the New Orleans Pelicans this season. After managing to advance to the second round of the 2018 NBA Playoffs, it looked like the Pelicans are ready to make a step forward and be even more dangerous team. Instead, they find themselves on 14th spot in the Western Conference with a 17-22 record, while having lost seven games in their last nine. According to the team’s star player Anthony Davis, these kinds of struggles are not sitting well with anyone at the organization.
“We’re a better team than our record shows. Everyone is frustrated. Players, coaches, front office. We’ve just got to do better,” – Davis told reporters after 126-121 loss to the Brooklyn Nets on Wednesday.
While Davis had another monster game against Brooklyn, in which he had 34 points and career-high 26 rebounds, Pelicans didn’t manage to find a way to slow down their opponents’ offense which scored 73 points in the first half alone.
“We wasn’t playing no defense,” – the 25-year-old All-Star added. “The whole first half, they did whatever they wanted. They didn’t feel us on the defensive end. We wasn’t physical, wasn’t talking. They got a lot of layups, a lot of open 3s. They shot the ball extremely well in the first half due to our lazy defense.”
Besides playing poor defense lately, New Orleans had other things going against them in the past weeks. Their starting point guard Elfrid Payton missed 30 games due to injuries, while Nikola Mirotic didn’t play in the last 10 for the same reason. With Payton and Mirotic back in the lineup, the Pelicans might wake up and start winning some games.
