The New Orleans Pelicans, over the last 12 months, have gone through one of the most rollercoaster years I can ever remember as a long-time fan of the NBA. It was around this time last year that fans learned of Anthony Davis’ wish to be traded. From there we had controversy during the trade deadline, to winning the No. 1 overall pick, to Anthony Davis finally bring traded and then seeing their No. 1 overall pick, Zion Williamson, start the year on the injury report.
We are now halfway through the NBA season and the Pelicans are finally healthy and starting to look like a team that could make a second-half run at a playoff spot. They currently sit 11th in the West at 20-and-30, but only five games back of the eight-seeded Grizzlies at 25-and-25. The road doesn’t get any easier with games against the Bucks, Pacers, Blazers and Thunder over the next week. Looking at the odds from sports betting dime, the Pelicans are 6.5-point dogs in tonight’s game against the team with the second favorite odds to win the title, the Milwaukee Bucks.
If the Pelicans can somehow find a way to win tonight and survive this tough stretch of games as we head into the All-Star Break, their second-half schedule gets much softer as they try to make a run for the playoffs. With each game that goes by, rookie Zion Williamson gets more and more comfortable and is starting to build some chemistry with his teammates — especially Brandon Ingram, a budding super-star that came to the big easy in the trade that sent Anthony Davis packing.
The Pelicans are the sixth highest-scoring team in the league with the fourth-highest pace, and most of that was without Williamson in the lineup. Coach Alvin Gentry helped build a similar style of play when he was the assistant coach in Golden State during a few of their title runs. The biggest obstacle holding them back is their defense because while they average 115 points per game they give up 117 — only the Wizards and Hawks give up more.
The Pelicans have a tough road ahead if they plan to pull themselves out of the hole they dug for themselves with their early-season struggles, but they have the pieces to make a strong playoff push — and who doesn’t want to see a one-eight playoff matchup between the Lakers and Pelicans, the two teams inexorably linked by the Anthony Davis trade.
