New Orleans Pelicans: 3 Overreactions to the 98-95 win over the Spurs

New Orleans Pelicans: The Pels’ bench is terrible

Overreaction #2: The Pelicans do not have a bench

After admitting that he needed to use his bench more after losing to the Heat, Stan Van Gundy used a grand total of eight players against the Spurs.

You can’t really blame him. No one on the Pelicans’ bench has done much to earn minutes except for Josh Hart (more on him later), and SVG is not just going to give minutes to guys who don’t deserve them.

Nicolo Melli is unplayable at this point. Jaxson Hayes got more minutes but did little with them, putting up a -15 plus/minus and causing Stan Van Gundy to use two timeouts in a row.

If one thing has been made clear, it is that Ingram, Lonzo and Adams cannot be on the bench at the same time.

It’s also clear that the Pelicans rely heavily on J.J. Redick to hit shots, which he did not. Without him the Pels’ bench unit struggles to score, so SVG is going to have to do a better job of staggering Ingram and Ball to make sure one of them is always on the floor.

The Pels’ starters played well for the most part against the Spurs but the bench nearly gave the game away again.

Only one bench player has stood out so far, and the Pels may end up regretting how they handled him in the offseason.