New Orleans Pelicans: Brandon Ingram’s Revenge
By Tim Burke
New Orleans Pelicans get revenge on the Utah Jazz
What was at stake?
The impact of this game on the standings was mentioned earlier, but a win in this game felt more necessary for the Pelicans than the Jazz. Digging themselves out of the giant hole their 13-game losing streak placed them in, New Orleans was on a tear since the losing stopped, their nine wins before this game came by an average of 11.4 points.
The Jazz were pretty much locked into a playoff spot by this point in the season and weren’t going to catch the Lakers to win the west. While it would be more beneficial to potentially face the Lakers in the conference finals, the Jazz would still need to go through Los Angeles to make the finals anyway.
To me, the only thing at stake was revenge for the Pelicans and it wasn’t even the Jazz who were responsible for the foul not being called. We all know Brandon Ingram was expected to have a monster game in an effort to show that he deserved a spot in the All-Star game.
Derrick Favors also had something at stake in the game, it was just his second regular season game versus the team he spent the last eight seasons with. Favors had basically his season averages in that game with nine points, eleven rebounds, and two assists in 29 minutes. No doubt he wanted to have a better game than that in the rematch.