New Orleans Pelicans: The Pels’ bench is going to kill the starters

The New Orleans Pelicans are not getting enough out of their bench and it is going to take its toll on the starters.

Coming into the season, one of the big narratives was whether Zion Williamson would have the health or fitness to play big minutes for the Pelicans.

Now? The Pels are wishing they had some way to get him fewer minutes without killing their chances of winning the game.

Same with Brandon Ingram, who has been wearing down late in games because the Pelicans literally have no backup and struggle mightily when he is off the floor.

Zion is averaging 32.9 minutes per game, which is fine, same with Ingram’s 35.1 per game, as they are both young guys who should be able to play big minutes.

But lately it has been getting ridiculous and something has to change before the Pels’ starters are too burnt out to make a run in the second half when the schedule actually gets much tougher.

New Orleans Pelicans: The terrible bench is forcing the starters to play huge minutes

Both the Pels’ stars have seen their numbers tick up over the last ten games as the bench continues to be terrible.

Zion played 69 combined minutes in the back-to-back against Detroit and Milwaukee, while Brandon Ingram 74 minutes.

All five starters played more than 30 against Detroit and needed every second of it to get a win against the worst team in the Eastern Conference.

Stan Van Gundy went with an 8-man rotation against the Bucks and it showed, as the starters did not have the legs to hit the shots they needed down the stretch.

Look, it’s not as if the starters can’t play big minutes, they can, but if you want to get the most out of guys and have them fresh for clutch time, they need to sit from time to time.

The problem is that the bench gives up so many leads, the Pels can’t afford to have any of their starters on the pine for long or they’ll be down 20 points by the time they come back in.

Josh Hart has been the Pels’ only good bench player and he has been inconsistent shooting the ball, usually because he’s being asked to defend much-larger players, which eventually takes its toll.

No one is going to cry for a bunch of 20-somethings having to play too much but it would be nice if the bench could occasionally contribute to a win so the starters weren’t constantly bearing the burden of being perfect while playing 30+ minutes.

This is not sustainable, and is either going to lead to an injury or a drop off in play.

Good NBA teams occasionally win games behind huge games from one or more bench players which has happened exactly zero times this season for the New Orleans Pelicans.

The starters have been up to the task so far, but as the season wears on, they are going to wear down.