Pelicans continue to lose

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Published: November 7, 2015

I’m going to boil the Pelicans issues right now to a single issue.  It’s far from the only issue, but for now I feel it is the one that is the biggest problem:

Their guard play isn’t cutting it.

You can point go Eric Gordon and his pretty decent offensive numbers.  But in my book, he’s not really a guard.  He’s a wing, forced to defend guards because of his size.  It is not his job, nor should it be his job, to crack a defense and get the other team scrambling, generating open offenses.  The hallmark of each of Gentry’s offensive juggernauts has been a penetrating guard that had to be honored.

Ish Smith can penetrate and create for others, but doesn’t need to be guarded.  Toney Douglas needs to be guarded on the edge, but can’t penetrate and create for others.  Defensively, neither of these guys do much.  They can be rubbed off easily on screens and if they are forced to switch they can’t do anything to stop bigger players.

You combine them with Anderson or Babbitt, one of whom is always on the floor right now, and the Pelicans have a giant crack in their defense every moment of every game.  The Mavs took advantage of this in the fourth, and the Pels defense crumbled.

Observations:

  • I have a growing sense that Ajinca is the fourth best player available to this team right now.  He just feels like he comes in and positively impacts the defensive end of the floor – and his offense is more than competent.  I want to see more minutes for him.
  • It’s almost comical how little other teams bother to guard Ish Smith on the perimeter.
  • It feels lame to bring it up tonight, when Ryan Anderson was pretty effective as a second team scorer – but the injuries has put him into a role where he’s just having to do too much to score.
  • There were some awful turnovers tonight – and I couldn’t figure out why our guards kept trying to toss entry passes into the post from near the top of the arc.  That angle is awful and is just asking for interception.
  • Gordon is a pure shooter.

Sigh.

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