3 Christmas wishes to help fix New Orleans Pelicans issues
By Willie Lutz
The New Orleans Pelicans are starting to show signs of life on the defensive end, but they’ll need more if they hope to make a run back into the playoffs.
Attempting to salvage their season, the New Orleans Pelicans are starting to get healthy and play with a level of potency on both ends of the floor.
Last night, the New Orleans Pelicans picked up a huge road win against the Portland Trail Blazers, a team that was on a four-game winning streak coming into the night plus playing close to full strength (minus Jusuf Nurkić, who is out until 2020).
The Pelicans are still close to the bottom of the league at 8-23, just one game behind the last place Golden State Warriors in the Western Conference.
Somehow, New Orleans is still just 6 games out of the playoffs, as the bottom of the conference continues to parity each other.
Putting the team within striking distance of the playoffs to correspond with the return of Zion Williamson, Alvin Gentry is starting to get this thing back on track before the start of 2020.
Heading to Colorado for a Christmas Day matchup against the Denver Nuggets, the New Orleans Pelicans have a chance to pick up a ton of positive momentum to end their four-game road trip, including their wins over Portland and the Minnesota Timberwolves.
While it took this team’s defense a long time to rally into its current form, the birds finally look like a competent NBA team, who’ve held opponents under 110 points in their last four games, allowing 101.8 points per game and picking up a 2-2 split over the stretch.