New Orleans Pelicans: 5 games the team can’t lose in midst of playoff race
By Willie Lutz
After falling at home to a weak opponent on Tuesday, the New Orleans Pelicans have to start showing signs of urgency against non-elite teams.
Tuesday night was supposed to be a walk in the park for the New Orleans Pelicans, who were faced with the task of keeping the Minnesota Timberwolves at arm’s length. Without Karl-Anthony Towns healthy, it projected as an easy, get-right win.
Instead, the team dropped the game by a final score of 139-134, pushing their record to 26-35 on the season and have now lost three of their last five games, all by less than ten points.
Though the previous losses came to the Los Angeles Lakers, it’s continuing to hamper this team’s ability to gain traction in the Western Conference playoff race.
With their loss to Minnesota on Tuesday, coupled with wins from the Sacramento Kings and San Antonio Spurs, the Pelicans fell from ninth in the conference down to twelfth, though they’re still just 4 games behind the Memphis Grizzlies.
Hopefully, for the Pelicans, the loss will allow them to refocus their energy to ensure lapses like this won’t be repeated in favorable games still to come this season.
After all, having the easiest remaining strength of schedule in the league doesn’t mean a thing if your team can’t win the easy games.
While they’ll face a formidable opponent on Wednesday on the road against the Dallas Mavericks, the team has a lot of soft opponents left, with only two games remaining against squads in the top-four seeds of their conference.
The New Orleans Pelicans have plenty of winnable games on the schedule, but with a 12-19 home record, there’s a lot of hesitation about how easy the team can make the stretch for themselves.