New Orleans Pelicans: Loss to Bulls highlights Pels’ biggest problems

New Orleans Pelicans: The Pels’ big swings

If there is anything that exemplifies this season more than anything else, it’s the wild swings the New Orleans Pelicans often have from quarter to quarter.

The Pelicans will sometimes look like one of the worst teams in the NBA one quarter, then score 45 points in the next one.

The same happened last night against the Bulls, as the Pels were down as many as 19 points before storming back in the 4th quarter, scoring 45 points and nearly pulling off the comeback.

It’s nice that the Pels don’t give up and it’s nice to know they have those kinds of quarters in them, but they have blown leads and been down by double-digits in nearly every game this season.

This comes down to their youth and inconsistency, but it also comes down to focus and effort.

The Pelicans often just coast on defense as if they can make it up on the other end. This is not how the NBA works, as just about every team can fill it up offensively and will torch you if the defensive effort is not consistently there.

The Pelicans routinely give up 120+ points, so it doesn’t matter that they are an offensive juggernaut at times because just about every team looks like peak Warriors against he Pelicans’ awful defense.

The big swings come from game to game for the Pels but even from quarter to quarter.

They simply have to be more consistent, to actually care about defense for an entire game and to take care of the little things like free throws if they want to sniff the playoffs this season.