New Orleans Pelicans unable to respond late, lose to Portland Trailblazers 99-90
The New Orleans Pelicans entered Portland on Saturday night facing a tough task. With their playoff destiny in their own hand the Pelicans just needed to win to keep themselves in line to win the eighth seed in the Western Conference playoffs.
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Early on things looked great for the Pelicans, as they jumped out to a 14-4 lead in the first few minutes of the game. Then the bench entered and everything fell apart to end the half. But the Pelicans battled back throughout the second half and even took the lead in the fourth quarter before a late Blazers run handed the Pelicans a tough 99-90 loss.
Other observations:
- This is a tough loss but it isn’t killer. It puts more pressure on the Pelicans to beat either the Memphis Grizzlies or Houston Rockets in the next few games but either are possible. The Thunder have a brutal schedule that continues tomorrow against the Rockets so New Orleans can be back in the 8 seed by tomorrow night.
- Anthony Davis clearly isn’t right and I think it may just be fatigued. Davis has played a lot of minutes this year and his shots lately have been short and he has stopped going to the rim as often. He needs to get it figured out though because the Pelicans don’t make the playoff without him playing like he is capable of.
- The officiating wasn’t great in this one but I didn’t think it was as bad as many others did. There were blown calls both ways but the officials consistently let the game be physical which should have played into the Pelicans hands with Asik and Evans. It didn’t.
- The bench was just brutal tonight. Every time New Orleans had to use multiple bench players the Blazers went on a run. Just ugly.
- Next up is the Warriors on Tuesday so this may get worse before it gets better.
Tweet of the night:
Not great. Not great at all.
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