It’s late March for the New Orleans Pelicans. Yet outside of the Tower of Babel-level Houston Rockets and Golden State Warriors, much of the Western Conference is undecided.
Currently, six games separate the conference’s three-seed and ten-seed, which means despite The New Orleans Pelicans have an 89% playoff chance, according to FiveThirtyEight, they could be facing one of nine other teams in the playoffs, with those being:
Denver Nuggets (39-33)
Los Angeles Clippers (38-33)
Minnesota Timberwolves (41-31)
Oklahoma City Thunder (43-30)
Portland Trail Blazers (44-27)
San Antonio Spurs (42-30)
Utah Jazz (40-31)
And of course, the Houston Rockets (57-14) and Golden State Warriors (53-18).
So for that reason, it’s time to see which Pelicans role players should be able to step up against each potential matchup.
And although some argue about the exact definition of a role player, in this article it means any active player on the Pelicans roster not named Anthony Davis or Jrue Holiday.