New Orleans Pelicans: Grades for win vs. Oklahoma City Thunder

New Orleans Pelicans vs. Thunder: Grades for the guards

A solid game for Lonzo Ball in everything but scoring.

Ball struggled to put the ball in the rack—3-of-12 from the field and missing all of his eight attempted threes—but he was still valuable for the New Orleans Pelicans.

Ball collected rebounds to start the offense, delivered six assists, and most of all, was really active on defense. The former UCLA guard has particularly impressed in the latter department as of late. Ball has always had the potential to be a great defender, but over the past three games, this has really been apparent.

First, he did a good job on Paul George. Then, he also made things really difficult for Michael Porter Jr. at times. Against the Thunder, he was generally effective, locked in against individual attackers, and also playing great team defense. Ball ended up with three steals.

Eric Bledsoe was fine but unspectacular.

He didn’t do anything wrong and mostly made the right decisions, but it’s not like he was worth writing about. Bledsoe missed all four of his three-pointers; yet, he was taking the right shots.

Something I’ve liked about Bledsoe as of late is his renewed willingness to get downhill and aggressively put pressure on the opposing basket. He isn’t the athlete he once was, but Bledsoe is still annoying to deal with when he’s driving at you. From there, he can either draw fouls or make a pass.

Against the Thunder, he had four assists to zero turnovers.

Another B grade for another guard, but that’s because none of them did anything bad and all of them contributed in different but mostly unremarkable ways.

Lewis had a steady performance against the Thunder off the bench. You wouldn’t notice that looking at his stats, but he was confident with the ball in his hands, made some passes that should’ve ended up as assists, and played with the right pace.

The one thing he really needs to keep working on is his three-pointer.