The New Orleans Pelicans are now three games back of the NBA playoffs and they have nobody to blame but themselves. They had plenty of chances to win today’s game against the Los Angeles Clippers, but some poor defense followed by even worse decision making on offense led to another loss that the Pelicans squandered away.
The worst part is that New Orleans was in this game for the entire day. They started off on fire from the field, and Anthony Davis was a monster. He didn’t miss a shot for the entire first half, and his lone miss for the entire game came, outside of garbage time, came on a contested layup in the third quarter. However, when it came to crunch time the Pelicans looked elsewhere for their offense. They looked away from their superstar and settled for shots that the Clippers were okay with giving up. They were doing exactly what the defense wanted, and that’s bad offense. New Orleans has received criticism all year for how they’ve handled late game situations, but today their decision making was the worst it’s been all season. They handed away a game they could have, and possibly should have, ended up winning and now their road to the playoffs has gotten even harder.