The New Orleans Pelicans cannot win basketball games right now, but Alvin Gentry’s coaching plays a heavy hand in their struggles this season.
Riding an up-and-down first few weeks of the season for the New Orleans Pelicans, head coach Alvin Gentry and his team are now on the sore end of an eight-game losing streak.
So far this season, the Pelicans have been a roller-coaster ride on the court as they continue to lack identity on either end of the court.
After taking a drubbing against the Dallas Mavericks today, a game where the Pelicans lost 84-130, shooting 3-of-32 from three-point range and getting outrebounded 34-55, the team is now 6-17 on the season.
Currently, the Pelicans are seemingly losing control and are just 1 game behind the Golden State Warriors for last in the Western Conference.
This was the second time this week Dallas didn’t have to play Luka Dončić or Kristaps Porzingis in the third quarter, instead opting to let the bench continue making easy work of a completely lost Pelicans squad.
The Pelicans were hoping to be within striking distance of the eighth seed when Zion Williamson returned to action.
With the rookie still a few weeks away, the season is quickly slipping away in New Orleans.
Over the last eight games, Alvin Gentry doesn’t seem to be getting the team ready to play, as they’ve allowed the second-most points in the league over the stretch.
It’s not that the Pelicans are getting blown out of the water night in and night out, it’s that they simply cannot win games. Down the stretch, they’ve let close games slip away as they’ve expected Brandon Ingram and Jrue Holiday to win in isolation, too often to no avail.
One of the most confusing developments of the season has been the utter failure of the Pelicans’ defense. Ranking second-to-last in opponent scoring, their addition of ‘defensive guru’ Jeff Bzdelik this offseason seems to have gone south.
The hiring of David Griffin made the departure of Alvin Gentry somewhat inevitable, even if it wasn’t obvious from day one.
Things have not gone well in New Orleans, as the team is not delivering on their internal preseason expectations to be scrappy every night and win enough games to compete for a playoff spot.
When the team hired Executive VP of Basketball Operations David Griffin this April, it seemed somewhat probable that Alvin Gentry might not stay the Pelicans head coach without early positive results.
Typically a new front office will want the chance to pick their own coach, as the now-departed Dell Demps was responsible for bringing Gentry to the Pelicans from Golden State.
As Gentry’s team keeps giving away games, Griffin’s media day promise of being competitive this season isn’t being fulfilled. In that case, he needs to move on from Gentry in order to set an organizational standard for hitting expectations.
Receiving ample time and opportunity to succeed in New Orleans, Alvin Gentry hit his 200th loss today as the head coach of the Pelicans. Now in his fifth season with the team, he’s posted a combined 151-200 record.
Oddly, the team did sign Gentry to a short extension in June, paying him through the end of the 2020-2021 season, but the team could easily eat the money and move on from the coach.
With the Pelicans slipping out of contention and Gentry not finding ways to help his team win games, it seems like the front office might soon have to make a decision about their head coach.
This team might want to find out what they have in Chris Finch as the season continues to spiral out of control. Currently ranking as the team’s associate head coach and in charge of the team’s pretty successful offense, Finch could prove to be an in-house option as the team’s head coach.
Finch is noted for his pace-friendly style assisting in the Houston Rockets offense from 2015-2016 and the Denver Nuggets offense from 2016-2017 before coming to the Pelicans in 2017.
He was also the head coach of a D-League team who won a championship in 2010, receiving the league’s Coach of the Year honors for his squad’s impressive campaign.
Right now, the team is looking for answers that Alvin Gentry simply doesn’t seem to be able to provide as their head coach.
While they might decide to ride out the season with Gentry and check for the most-favorable candidate in the offseason, it seems like it could be a matter of time before the team leans in another direction.
The season is roughly a quarter of the way over, but the New Orleans Pelicans are starting to lose their pulse as Western Conference playoff contenders. Alvin Gentry’s coaching performance has been less than inspiring and it’s hard to imagine how well they’ll function even with Zion.