The New Orleans Pelicans failed Anthony Davis last night

The New Orleans Pelicans wasted one of the best nights in Anthony Davis’s career on Wednesday night at home. The problems were minor but impactful in a five-point loss to the Denver Nuggets.

How much of the responsibility for victory falls on the shoulders of a team’s best player? Most of it, right? But sometimes that player produces individually to the greatest of his abilities, and the team still loses. Players like LeBron James, Chris Paul, and Kevin Durant have all dealt with this in recent seasons. Last night, the New Orleans Pelicans faced exactly that problem in their opening night competition against the Denver Nuggets.

Anthony Davis posted a stat line that has only one comparison, and it puts Davis in great company:

Blame Jrue Holiday’s absence; blame the team’s uneasiness trying to get familiar on offense; blame Alvin Gentry’s sometimes curious rotation decisions (Lance Stephenson played almost the entire fourth quarter). The Pelicans aren’t getting another performance like this out of Davis for a while, and they didn’t take advantage.

If they can’t beat an equally talented Nuggets team when their best player plays like a Hall of Famer, how do they win any game? That’s a question for another time, but for now, let’s look at why they couldn’t pull this one out, despite tying it up with less than six minutes left in the game.

Quick Decisions

It’s something we’ve been harping on here at Pelican Debrief all offseason, and it came into play right away tonight: Playing quickly doesn’t always mean running in transition every time you have the chance. This game featured 107 possessions, per RealGM. Yet Davis created value for the Pelicans early on by making near-immediate decisions in the half-court.

For the most part, that meant pulling up for jumpers over a frontcourt rotation of Jusuf Nurkic, Nikola Jokic, and Kenneth Faried that had no hope of staying with him:

On a night when not a lot else was working outside of the two-man game between AD and Tim Frazier, making these quick decisions kept the offense in step with a powerful first-half performance from the Nuggets. Yet it would ultimately be a part of the team’s undoing.

Spacing

Here’s where Gentry’s curious rotation decisions come into play. For much of the fourth quarter, Lance Stephenson and Tim Frazier were both on the court. Though E’Twaun Moore also played a majority of the final period, having those two on the court together means you’re already going to be cramped in the half-court.

Frazier hit a three in the fourth, and Terrence Jones and Solomon Hill tried their best to pull defenders out to the three-point line, but the lack of trust in Buddy Hield to finish games has already manifested itself after one game. Things get a little claustrophobic when he’s on the bench.

Look for Langston Galloway or Dante Cunningham to get more minutes in small lineups if things stay stale, even though the team’s offensive efficiency reached its nadir in each of these player’s small fourth quarter stretches.

Iso Ball

Davis posted a usage of 50% in the fourth quarter, per NBA.com. He drew eight fouls overall in the game, but only one in a physical fourth quarter. It appeared that after a game in which Davis possessed a physical advantage over every member of the Nuggets’ frontcourt, Alvin Gentry was content to let Davis go one-on-one in an advantageous matchup to take the game home in the final period.

That plan backfired. Although Kenneth Faried does in fact present a wonderful opportunity for Davis (slower, smaller, less disciplined than Davis), possessions broke down amid those clogged lineups and dialed-in double-teams from Denver.

Non-Davis Pelicans shot only 36.2% from the field tonight, yet the team only grabbed five offensive rebounds, with no player chipping in any more than one. The team as a whole scored zero second-chance points in that stagnant final frame, and only attempted four free-throws (two for Davis, two for Jones).

Next: Player Grades for opening night loss to Denver

These are alarming tidbits for a fourth quarter that felt just as frustrating as the numbers show it to have been. Considering though that the Pels stayed in the game after allowing 60 first-half points to Denver despite shooting so poorly overall and only 3-19 from long distance, there’s cause for optimism. As Joel Meyers and David Wesley constantly mentioned throughout the contest, the team really did play hard and fight for what it got. And what it got was darn close to a win, ugliness and all.