The Pelicans were blown out by the Raptors on Wednesday in Dejounte Murray‘s return from a fractured hand. Murray and his teammates left their home court humiliated with their season at a crossroads. Their fans turned on them during the 119-93 loss and Murray couldn’t blame them.
“If you’re not embarrassed and really mad about this, that’s a problem,” Murray said, per Brett Martel of the Associated Press. “It’s not really about the loss, (but) how we lost in front of our fans, Like, even the fans booing — I mean, what would you do if you was a fan paying your money? You want to come watch a competitive basketball game, especially from your home team. So, they got all the rights to say what they want, feel how they feel. They deserve a better game.”
Entering the season, the Pelicans looked like a contender with Murray, acquired in a trade with Atlanta, joining a lineup that included Zion Williamson, CJ McCollum and Brandon Ingram, along with proven role players Trey Murphy, Herbert Jones and Jose Alvarado.
Injuries have left them scrambling the first two months of the season. They have lost six straight and 15 of their last 17. Williamson, Ingram, Murphy, Jones and Alvarado remain sidelined but Murray says the compete level must rise, no matter who is available. Toronto came into New Orleans winless on the road.
“When you’ve got guys in, guys out, guys in, guys out, it’s really tough,” said Murray, who finished with 14 points after missing his first seven field goal attempts. “But I think it’s not tough to compete. You can’t get punked. You can’t get pushed around. Tonight, it was just disgusting. We’ve got to compete. We’ve got to play harder, no matter who’s on the floor.”
It’s fair to wonder whether changes might be coming soon, either to the roster or the coaching staff. Head coach Willie Green knows a quick turnaround is needed if his team wants to get back in the postseason picture.
“Starting with me, we have to be better,” Green said, according to Christian Clark of the New Orleans Times-Picayune. “That was a lack of competition. We allowed a team to come on our home floor and make us look soft. That’s what I told our group. That can’t happen.”
Toronto shot 49.5 percent from the field and had 38 assists on 47 made baskets.
“Either they got better overnight, or we’ve got to do a better job closing out and making it more difficult,” McCollum said. “It was a horrible showing. From top to bottom, we’ve all got to be better.”
New Orleans now heads out on a three-game road swing with stops in Memphis, New York and Atlanta.
Pelicans team was put together like some NBA 2k player.
Just a bunch of names but they have no chemistry.
That’s not really true. When they’re healthy they play well. It’s the same team as last season. You could argue they lost some team guys in the Murray trade, but chemistry isn’t their problem.
Their identity is tied to their injured stars. Green needs them to rally around who is left when they’re out. But to be fair he’s been ringing that bell for the last 3 years. At a point it begins to fall on deaf ears. Not his fault, just the reality.
A coaching change might give a short term boost but they need to address the Zion problem. It’s officially a problem!
Lil D, the problems go beyond short-term injuries, IMO. The Pels front office broke this thing in the off-season with bad trades and failure to acquire capable bigs.
I attended the 2 early season Pels-Warriors games in SF, which was before Zion, CJ, and Jones were lost to injury — a fairly complete team.
Zion, BI, and McCollum are strong offensively. Hawkins looks promising offensively. But it was obvious how little effort those 4 put forward defensively. I don’t know if Willie Green is to blame, or whether it’s due to having so many score-first players, but it’s obvious there is more to the problem than missing players.
Outside of Alvarado, every Pelicans defender was sub-par. Daniel Theis has always been lacking defensively. Missi is willing, but he’s inexperienced, and gets lost. Using Herb Jones at C turns a great wing defender into a physically overmatched liability.
CJ, especially at this stage of his career, doesn’t exert energy on the defensive end. BI is the same. Zion makes little effort to run back, and he can’t defend away from the basket. Hawkins is an unwilling defender and way too light to defend big guards and forwards. Daniel Theis is a bad defender. Missi is motivated, but he was often completely lost.
If I’m Pels, accept reality and be decisive. The team can be competitive very soon with the right moves:
– this season is already over, start rebuild immediately
– keep Jones SF, Murphy SG, & Dejounte PG as core
– release or, if possible, trade Zion
– trade BI while he has value; he’s free agent in March
– trade CJ while he still has valu
I basically agree with you. My point is just it’s not a chemistry thing it’s a personnel thing. They need to make a decision around their strategy as a team and build the players to that. Because the zion strategy is not working and likely wont.
Pelicans love to eat flounder!
NOP needs to install a basketball man at the top of the organization, and go from there. The ownership group liked their City enough to buy the team, but didn’t (and doesn’t) have any background in basketball. They need help.
I suspect the first move will be to axe Griffin. The Human Rabbit’s Foot was always a strange choice to lead their post-AD rebuild. He didn’t have any background as a team builder, and (worse) didn’t appear to know it was a thing. With the assets he started with (Zion, and the booty for AD and Holiday) there was a path for him to fake it with a quick turnaround, but that path has closed for him and the team. The injury situation has been a bit surreal, and not just this year, and not just Zion. Maybe they angered the Basketball Gods with the Griffin hire. In any event, it’s been 5 years, and the situation isn’t improving or stabilizing on any front and his moves are all low impact when more is clearly needed.
I honestly thought Griffin had been fired 2 years ago
Offer CJ McCollum, Missi and a 1st to Brooklyn for Claxton and Finney-Smith