New Orleans Pelicans vs. Nets: Grades for the bigs
Zion Williamson looked really tired on the second night of the New Orleans Pelicans’ back-to-back.
It was not the typical dominant performance from Williamson, who only made his return against the Atlanta Hawks on Tuesday night and had missed the three games prior to that. The Pels’ all-star appeared gassed, with little lift behind his otherworldly athleticism.
Williamson was unable to break Shaquille O’Neal’s record of consecutive 20-point performances while shooting 50 percent from the field. He went 4-for-12—an extremely unusual 33 percent on his shots from him—and just did not get going at all. Williamson found it tough to finish through Brooklyn’s length.
The thing is, though, even when he has a C grade night, Williamson still scores 16 points and dishes out six assists. He had an off night, but it’s not worrying coming off an injury and on a back-to-back.
Steven Adams was one of the least bad players against the Nets because I can honestly say that only Eric Bledsoe truly played well.
Adams was up for the challenge of defending LaMarcus Aldridge in the post and actually seemed to enjoy it. Still, Aldridge finished with 22 points, so it’s not like the Kiwi center did a defensive job on him.
On offense, he took the shots he got to score eight points and got four offensive rebounds. The Pelicans are never going to ask much more of Adams.
I’m ready for Brandon Ingram to return, as I’m sure Adams is. Even though the Adams/Ingram two-man game can get repetitive and even drab at times, it has largely worked for the Pels all year long. It doesn’t seem like New Orleans is going to be able to defend this year, so they need to at least get the scoring back up.
Stan Van Gundy threw in a surprise against the Nets when he played Jaxson Hayes at the 4 pretty much whenever he was on the court.
While this was unexpected, I don’t think it was effective at all. Sure, Hayes only missed two shots and ended up scoring 11 points, but this lineup does not make sense for this Pelicans team. All that it did was further pack the paint and constrict New Orleans’ spacing even more.
I don’t really see the point of having a five on the floor with Hayes, Bledsoe, Marshall, James Johnson, and Willy Hernangómez. None of those guys are true threats from beyond the three-point line. I get that there are injuries and this was an attempt at a creative solution, but I am vehemently against it.
Willy Hernangómez got some minutes against the Nets since Van Gundy resorted to the double-big lineup on a few occasions.
I thought Hernangómez played poorly and embodied why those five-man combinations with two bigs are not an answer for the Pelicans. It wasn’t only on him, but early in the game, Hernangómez got the ball in the post and twice lost it over—once on a turnover and the other off a Brooklyn block.
It was a rough start for the Spanish big, but the spacing he had at his disposal was beyond terrible. He’s generally going to look to post up, but those post-ups are useless if opponents are able to just collapse on them.
On defense, he also had a tough night. Hernangómez is too immobile to deal with the NBA’s best teams. He was overpassed time and time again by the Nets.
Wenyen Gabriel played the last four minutes of the fourth quarter and pretty much did as expected. The South Sudan big played with effort, as he always does, and made a nice fadeaway jumper.
If Van Gundy wants to size the Pels up, then I would rather Gabriel get more time than putting out two pure centers at once. Gabriel gives New Orleans a bigger and longer look but is also more comfortable switching and spacing the floor.
Another possible solution is dusting off Will Magnay. The Australian big has barely played three minutes all season long for the Pelicans, but he has shown glimpses of blocking shots and stretching out to the three-point line in both the G League and the Australian league.