New Orleans Pelicans survive Sacramento Kings, win 101-95

Well it wasn’t pretty, but the New Orleans Pelicans managed to squeak one out against the Sacramento Kings tonight. In the context of the entire game, the win is somewhat frustrating, because it never should have been this close to begin with. New Orleans led 71-53 during the third quarter, and that point it looked like the game was over. Anthony Davis was destroying things, the offense was humming, and the Kings just couldn’t keep up with a superior Pelicans team. However, Sacramento went on a furious comeback, and all of a sudden the score was 74-71 in the Pelicans favor, and things were looking dicey. This comeback by the Kings was entirely fueled by DeMarcus Cousins playing an incredible game.

Cousins recorded his second straight triple double tonight, and he did so thanks to a Pelicans defense that did not adjust. For the second half of the third quarter, and most of the fourth, Sacramento ran Cousins from the 3-point arc, and ran him against Omer Asik in the middle of the pain. The entire time he did so, Cousins ate Asik alive with contact, dunks, post ups, runners, floaters, jumpshots, freethrows, and any kind of offense created in the game of basketball. He was an unstoppable force down low, and no matter what Asik did the most he could do was slightly slow him down. Now this begs the question, why did it take the Pelicans so long to adjust? Nobody was helping on Cousins, and he was, almost, single handedly keeping the Kings in the game. Rather than force Sacramento to beat them with players that had so far not showed up, New Orleans instead let Cousins consistently overpower Asik.

To make things worse, on the offensive end New Orleans was a train wreck all night. They couldn’t make buckets in the halfcourt, any plays they ran ended up dead, and the 3-point shooting they had used to gain their lead early completely disappeared. Of course, George Karl had his team capitalize off New Orleans poor shooting by having players leak out and get ahead of a bad Pelicans transition defense. Far too often did a missed Pelicans shot turn into an outlet pass down the floor to a wide open Derrick Williams, or Ben Mclemore.

All of these complaints aside, a win is a win, and for the Pelicans this was a big one. The Oklahoma City Thunder lost tonight, and that puts New Orleans in a tie for the loss column. This means that from this point on the Pelicans control their fate to the playoffs. Win more games than the Thunder and they get in, and even though tonight was sloppy, it was still a win.

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