New Orleans Pelicans: Grades for 98-95 win over the San Antonio Spurs

The New Orleans Pelicans rode their defense and rebounding to a sloppy 98-95 win over the San Antonio Spurs.

It wasn’t pretty, but the New Orleans Pelicans were able to hold on and get a win over the San Antonio Spurs to go 2-1 on the season.

The Pelicans shot just 20.8 percent from 3-point range and only 38.3 percent overall but were able to grind out a victory behind some timely defense and rebounding.

Even though the game was not well played, it was nice to see the Pels able to come away with a victory when their offense struggled most of the night.

Here are the grades for the Pelicans, which will continue to show some early trends.

New Orleans Pelicans: Point guard grades in win over San Antonio Spurs

Point Guards

Lonzo Ball continues to impress with his overall game and the Pelicans struggled every time he went to the bench.

Ball has been a menace on defense and continued against the Spurs, swiping five steals and disrupting the Spurs’ offense all night.

Lonzo has not only played great on-the-ball defense but has gotten into passing lanes for deflections and steals that are causing chaos.

Lonzo was more aggressive taking the ball to the rim and pulling up from the mid-range off Steven Adams’ screens. Here he just kept going to the rim after getting the pass from Brandon Ingram on the secondary fast break.

Lonzo has improved his game on both ends and looks a lot more confident this season running the offense and playing lockdown defense.

He is making his case for that max contract and if he keeps playing like this the New Orleans Pelicans will be happy to give it to him.