This game felt strange. It wasn’t something in particular. Just everything about it felt odd. First off, the Pelicans didn’t have their own guys broadcasting the game. If you got anything, you got the Utah broadcast. Then, it was a late west coast game on a Saturday night in November. There is never a lot of interest in those types of games. Also, did you notice how quiet Utah and their fans were? The crowd only really seemed to come alive at a couple of points, and their team even seemed a little disinterested on defense.
Look, the Pelicans (7-5) got the win, and that’s great. However at the end of the day, I don’t think I’d ever describe this as a memorable game. Even though the seasons is young, I am almost certain this won’t be they type of game I’ll be able to recall next May. It just didn’t have that feel. I guess that’s what I meant by strange. It didn’t feel memorable or significant.
Of course, there are two things that stood out tonight. The first was Anthony Davis. Yes, he broke a career high, but that mark probably won’t last long either. Just take a look at this stat line and admire the efficiency. 43 points on 16-23 shooting (69.5%), 11-12 from the free throw line (91.7%), 14 rebounds, two steals, and one block. That’s a pretty good night. He was spectacular. He just dominated the game. I could come up with some more things to say, but that line speaks for itself. He is special, and we are luck that we get to watch him play for our favorite team.
The other thing that stood out tonight was Gordon’s injury. Again, I know we won, and I know that AD had a big night. Still, I want to talk about Gordon, if only for a second. First off, I want to mention that Gordon played well before he got injured. Sure, he made a couple of errors, but the dude hit his first three shots and was hustling. Second, I want to say that we don’t know how bad it is, and we don’t know what will happen. I understand that people are frustrated he is injured again, but let’s talk about other things. Injuries happen. They happen to every team. It is simply an annoying variable that everyone must account for. We aren’t special, and we aren’t cursed.
Also, let’s not mock Gordon. I’m not in the business of telling other people what to say, but the guy has had it rough. He certainly doesn’t want to get injured. Like any person, he wants to be successful. He wants to accomplish something, and what happened tonight is preventing him from doing that. I don’t know what his future with this team will be. I don’t know if this injury will or won’t affect that future. I just know that right now he is a Pelican, and we should support him as Pelicans fans. Get well soon, Eric.
The Pelicans play again on Tuesday, November 25th, when the Sacramento Kings come to town. The game starts at 8 PM Eastern time. Be on the lookout for the game’s open thread, our coverage on twitter, and a recap of the game later that night.
23 responses to “Pelicans get the Win, and AD gets a new Career High”
Your logic is almost as sound as your grammar
I agree on the strangeness, and maybe that’s in part because we weren’t watching/listening with our TV guys…I caught it on the internet and listened on the radio, which of course sets the stage for strangeness since the radio was well ahead of the action. Agree on Eric…he took a shot from the Utah player that he was trying to defend…was kind of strange to see him crumple after the fact…he has been shooting better and certainly is trying to play team ball. Not having him did hurt our options offensively..
that breakdown was pretty weak
bobmurrell You’re an jerk you was raised by wolves. This team keep this chucker Gordon who is injury prone and fragile. People hate to see the light. $15 million on a guy that can’t play a full season Demps & Benson should be arrested for paying this cancer. Benson should be charged twice for signing injury prone Byrd someone should get a warrant for Loomis too. Real teams research players health & injury history. The Pels just like playing the game of risk with Gordon I don’t know if there’s another franchise that’s stupid enough to pay someone that will play an small or medium percentage of games. I miss typed and rush my post get a life.
If you want to really know about how this organization works and the options they have with Gordon, you should read some old articles on here and listen to the podcasts.
If you just want to stay ignorant, check out Nola.com.
Benson bought the team after Gordon signed the contact.
It’s not illegal to just do something dumb. and we should all be thankful for that.
PatrickAWorth What’s wrong with this country when people hate for you to have an opinion my goodness. Yes I’m ignorant and proud of it. What’s missing in America regardless of political views is people with the balls to say what they mean instead of sugar coating everything. For 3 years what the heck did this team get out of Gordon not much so far just wasted goods.
DavidLeBoeuf It wasn’t a breakdown. At BSS, we are doing some different things with our post game pieces. I think the writers here feel that our comparative advantage is not in “breaking down” a game right after it happens. There are multiple major sports websites and networks that do a fine job of that.
Instead, we are giving ourselves a bit more freedom with the post game pieces. Often, there will be multiple short post game pieces. If you look at my recent posts, you’ll see some examples. I had a post that looked at a single lineup and another that broke down an individual play. That is where we are headed for our post game pieces. We are really going to focus in on a couple of topics, instead of giving a broad overview of the game.
Now, my recap certainly wasn’t analytical. If you didn’t enjoy that, I’m sorry. In my opinion, there were only two memorable events during this game 1) AD going off and 2) Gordon’s injury. I wanted to talk about Gordon’s injury. Why? Because I was on twitter when it happened, and I couldn’t believe the reaction of some fans. I wanted to get my two cents out there about a controversial figure for the franchise.
Look, I’m an economics and statistics guy. You don’t get a lot of “how I feel about something” posts from me. This was one. If you didn’t like it, stay tuned. There probably won’t be another for a while. Either way, thanks for the comment!
Big Picture Questions Raised on the road trip:
Last night two players in double figures but four scored 8 or 9, including Withey. Is Withey’s play last night significant? Is the lack of double figure scoring significant?
Ajinca averaged 7.5 points, 6 rebounds, 1 block, and 3 fouls and 20 minutes in four games starting. Happy? Sad?
If Gordon misses some time, will Rivers start and could that the beginning of Gordon coming off of the bench (where I feel he belongs)?
We went 2-2 without Asik on a road trip I was hoping to go 2-2 on with Asik? How does that balance out the possibility Asik played too much ball this summer and maybe out for some significant time this season?
I was hoping he meant the Gordon “breakdown” going to the floor?
I think many guys in that dd neighborhood is fine so long as they aren’t hurting us in other ways. I was most encouraged by WITHEY! Made his free throws, made the little side jumpers. And in my opinion is a better run protector than Ajinca…I like Ajinca’s shot but he just seems helplessly weak physically under the goal…cannot muscle up anything, or bring it down without fumbling it around if he’s got a body on him. They say he got bigger in the offseason but I don’t see it and don’t know how much he can thicken up top given his super thin base (legs).
I went from visiting the site daily to barely even caring after wins. You are the economics and statistics guy, so I’m sure there’s a rhyme or reason to what’s going on. But the written content has been pretty poor, and I frankly have zero desire to listen to the writers talk on podcasts with no discernible idea what I’m actually getting myself into. After all, if your written analysis is lacking, why should one care about your verbal analysis? Not being mean. Just providing input from one of many angles.
“Ignorant and proud of it”
“What’s missing in America”
So much irony.
I guarantee that no matter what you say on the topic of Eric Gordon, it’s been said before. Trust me, it takes more “balls” to defend him than bash him. The author is right in a sense. It does us no good as a wh
And I’ll bet he goes with Salmons and move Tyreke to SG…if he likes Rivers coming off the bench then he could even go Fredette with a good matchup, or go Rivers then Fredette, but my bet is still Salmons
Pelican Poster I agree with pel poster, but with babbitt starting over salmons as the tyreke jrue ad omer/alexi group MUST have someone to stretch the d a little bit. Rivers (in Montys mind I believe) has become essential member of the bench mob, specifically building chemistry with ryno.
Definitely big happy with performance of backup centers aside from withey’s horrendous game v blazers (lets give him a mulligan for shaking the rust off).
Personally hoping to go small a littlle, rather see min for russ and jimmer than salmons and more rivers as we wait out gordon’s injury.
Hope ej returns soon
watched some live stream of the game, listending to extreme homerism of jazz announcers was painful. we’re lucky to have joel myers here
All this stuff is pretty close to being off-topic. Stop attacking each other and talking about “this country.” Talk about the team.
HawnitsFanatic Noted. Feel free to contribute some pieces if you want to add something.
HawnitsFanatic HawnitsFanatic Thanks for the input. Let me respond to a couple of things.
First, I’m not THE economics and statistics guy. There are several writers here that are just as qualified if not more qualified to write on those topics. I was merely saying that is usually what a write and discuss. I did something different with this one.
Second, I don’t entirely understand your comments regarding the podcast. I have never been on a site podcast, so I certainly do not write articles with the intention of getting more people to listen to my voice. You also made a comment about not knowing what you’re getting yourself into with the podcast. Couple things… Like everything on this site, its free. You won’t pay anything (just like we don’t get paid). So if you don’t like a podcast, you can stop. Also, we currently have two podcast “In the NO” and “On the Fly” both of those podcast have descriptions around the site. Take a look at those, and you’ll have a better idea of what you’re getting into. Last thing on the podcasts; last year we did a reader survey, and the one overwhelming response was “more podcasts”. So you’ve already recognized that there are “many angles” out there, but I want to suggest that your view might be one of the least shared by other readers. Just a suggestion. I’m also not trying to be mean, but we don’t get paid enough to make everyone happy.
Finally, you made some comments about the writing. I don’t know if that was direct at the website, at this one piece, and/or at all of my recent posts. Let me just say this, we are trying to reach as many different people as possible. So we try to post a lot of different things. If you didn’t like this post from me, go back and look at what I wrote about “Tyreke and Small Sample Sizes”. It i very different from this and might be something that interest you. But I can’t guarantee that everything we post will interest you. Just the reality of tradeoffs. If you do have a problem with my writing specifically (not just this one post), I’ll be willing to listen. I won’t be willing to listen to any commentary or critique of other individual writers on the site.
Again, I appreciate the feedback. I really do. I enjoy it when anyone takes the time to post on these articles. I hope that breakdown gives you some perspective on where I am coming from.
DavidLeBoeuf
tough to criticize free content but understand the sentiment that with no tv coverage, a little basketball analysis would be appreciated .
from the portion I saw, – AD completely dominated on both ends. His jumper was working, he repeatedly beat their slower footed big men off the dribble, resulting in a few and-ones on tough dribble drives, and also was repeatedly able to leak out ahead of the pack for easy transition buckets. the big 2nd quarter run that generated the lead that we barely held throughout 2nd half was the result of a combination of the ad heroics featuring several fast break buckets.
we continued to be careful with the ball and easily won the turnover battle, generating several on aggressive d and benefiting from a number of poor decisions by their young players who compounded their mistakes with some real poor transition d.
credit to our bigs for winning the battle in the paint against a solid group of bigs. gobert looked particularly impressive, and all of our points in the paint were earned against solid defense.
it was a poor shooting night in general, ryno couldn’t buy one at any spot, rivers hit a couple real timely 3’s to stop bleeding in the 3rd and otherwise looked abysmal on offense, jrue got hot in 3rd to help keep team afloat as well with a series of j’s including a couple 3’s
we had no answer for gordon hayward when he got hot, driving to the rim, or stroking from outside, he got them back in it.
all in all, the jazz looked like a fiesty but young team. we capitalized enough on their mistakes to ride ad to a road win, despite the fact we did not have our a game.
DavidLeBoeuf
oh, and i was glad to see russdiculous get in the game though he picked up a couple real quick fouls due to some (over?)active defense.
jimmer also got some run after ej,s injury, much to the delight of the crowd. he was active though he didn’t score. he did hook ad up with a nice full court outlet pass for an easy deuce
Unibrow had a magnificent game!! Mid range jumper was on pt. He reminds me of a young garnett.
In regards to gordon, I don’t want him on the team and yes he makes way too much money. But i don’t wish injuries on anyone. Hope he gets Better soon
Houpgarou Pelican Poster My bad as I was typing that while on the move…totally forgot about Babbitt! Agree and would change my earlier comment to Monty going with him since we’ve seen a lot of him lately. I think that position is sort of Monty’s swing spot, whereas he may be more interested in building chemistry with the second unit (Rivers & Ryno) then disrupting it by breaking it up. Personally, I’d like to see Withey get a little time as the backup C to see how he does. Really liked the fact that he seemed to play efficiently (don’t know his stats for this), makin the most of his opportunities.
HawnitsFanatic Great name HF; I wore my old Hawnits long sleeve T out today. But wouldn’t that comment be like saying “you got an ugly as* wife/kid/ momma, but not trying to be mean or anything; just letting you know from my angle that they is fugly!”? This is their baby!
I also preferred this site’s post game analysis over others…mainly because it was always superior! So things are transitioning, but we are getting more than we are paying for! I really like the podcasts and am waiting for the next one, so I can listen to it while I commute!
I think Monty will go to Salmons. He’ll act as a glue guy, while playing no more than 15 min per game……Starting Rivers would disturb the second unit’s chemistry…..I don’t think Russ is quite ready to take on running the second unit…just yet….