Pelicans: Rebounds, Zion Williamson weren’t enough to overcome defense

New Orleans Pelicans: Opponents’ shooting percentage

Now let’s journey on over to how opponents shot against the Pels and where that placed New Orleans. We’ll look at shooting percentages from the field as a whole along with two-point, three-point, and free-throws in particular also the total number of shots taken from each area.

None of that is especially good as you may have expected as we already saw that New Orleans was outscored on the season. The overall shooting and two-point percentage are nothing to get worked up about though, could they be better? Yes. Is that what caused the Pels to lose so many games this year? No.

For some context here, the Los Angeles Clippers have three of the league’s best defenders in Kawhi Leonard, Patrick Beverley, and Paul George were only slightly better at allowing two-pointers and field goals, in general, to go in than New Orleans. The Clips allowed 46.4 percent of field goals and 52.9 percent of two-pointers.

The difference then was how New Orleans defended behind the arc. Well, if you watched any game this season you’d know opponents shot the three-ball like Kevin Durant, or the aforementioned Kawhi and George. It’s really hard to win many games when you’re allowing opponents to shoot like the Monstars (regardless of how long BI’s arms are).

Another point to keep in mind here is how much better opponents shot from the charity stripe. Now the NBA as a whole shot 77.8 percent on free throws this season, which’s only slightly below what opponents shot against the New Orleans Pelicans. Maybe the Pels got a little unlucky or the Western Conference has better free throw shooters either way this didn’t doom New Orleans.

To make that more clear, let’s look again at the shot frequency and accuracy table but this time for how opponents shot from each area. The chart shows how often opponents shot from each area and how successful they were doing so.

Woof. The Pels allow teams to shoot close to Zion-like levels near the rim while letting them shoot like Ingram from three-point land, not a great combination. The worst part of this is the Pels not only got outshot by three percent from behind the arc but opponents took 600 more threes than the Pels did. You can live with teams getting more attempts than you, but not while making them at a higher rate. This is what sunk the New Orleans defense this season.

The New Orleans Pelicans did a very poor job defending the entire three-point line this season. You can’t blame it all on teams shooting the lights out from the corner because opponents actually shot better above the break than below.

For the Pels to really make strides next season this will need to be addressed and the players will need to take more pride in defending. Look for the front office to attack this issue in the offseason as it’s the biggest area of need. New Orleans has the makings of a playoff team, the ship just needs to be fitted with better armor to defend against the Man-O-Wars sailing in the depths of the Western Conference.