New hair, a big 4th quarter and a bench boost in Pelicans win over Bulls

The New Orleans Pelicans had one of their most impressive team wins last night against the Bulls, led by Devonte’ Graham and his new hair.

Graham was coming off one of his worst games of the season against Charlotte and needed to try something to snap himself out of his shooting funk. He unleashed his hair from the braids against the Bulls, and like Antonio Daniels said during the game, “Long hair, don’t care!”

Graham played loose and had his most efficient night of the season, going 8-for-12 en route to 30 points to lead the Pelicans. It was important given that Brandon Ingram is still out and the Pelicans were desperately looking for a third guy to step up.

But it really was a team effort, as the Pels’ bench led the charge in the 4th quarter, Jonas Valanciunas had a hard-fought double-double, CJ McCollum had a “quiet” 25 points and Jose Alvarado sparked the run that won the game.

There has been a lot of talk about how much this team enjoys playing together and you could see it last night, as the bench was cheering on the team, players were running to help each other up and generally playing selfless team basketball that led to an important win.

The Pelicans are now tied for 9th with the Lakers (the Pels currently own the tiebreaker) and have a huge head-to-head matchup looming on Sunday that will help determine if the Pelicans get to keep their draft pick this offseason.

If the Pelicans continue to play like they did last night and get Brandon Ingram back this weekend, things could really get rolling in New Orleans.

Here are three takeaways from the win over the shorthanded Bulls, who got a huge night from Zach LaVine but were missing Lonzo Ball and DeMar DeRozan.

New Orleans Pelicans: Jonas Valanciunas appreciation

Jonas Valanciunas is having the best season of his career, averaging 18.1 points, 11.6 rebounds and 2.5 assists. The points and assists are career highs.

Valanciunas has stepped up with Ingram out and the Pelicans are running their offense through him a lot of the time. He’s been much better as a passer out of double teams this season, but has also been aggressively looking for his own shot.

He had 16 points and 19 rebounds last night in a battle against Nikola Vucevic, who played physically and quite frankly, got away with a ton of fouls.

Valanciunas gets taken for granted at times, but he has really been even better than advertised this season in a larger role and has stepped up with all of the injuries.