The New Orleans Pelicans made their Summer League debut, a lackluster effort against the Portland Trail Blazers that ended in an ugly blow out.
The key word was ugly, as this game was hard to watch at times, even for Summer League, with tons of sloppy play and missed shots.
The big news was that rookie Dyson Daniels went out with an apparent ankle injury after playing just over eight minutes. Daniels looked good defensively at times, but then rolled his ankle on a wild take to the rim in the second quarter.
A bad start just continued to get worse, as the New Orleans Pelicans scored just nine (yes, you read that correctly) points in the 3rd quarter. That’s only nine more points than I scored watching from my living room.
But any reactions to Summer League are by definition “over” reactions, as they are ultimately meaningless games being played largely by guys who won’t be in NBA or will have limited roles.
The New Orleans Pelicans can’t shoot!
The backboards took a beating in Las Vegas, as the Pels threw up enough bricks to build a new casino.
They shot just 4-of-31 from long range for a whopping 12.9 percent and shot just 27.5 percent from the field as a team overall.
Just about everyone got in on the action but the trio of Naji Marshall, Trey Murphy III and Jared Harper connected on just 2-of-19 from beyond the arc.
Look, a lot of these guys aren’t going to be on the depth chart, or will be playing much different roles, so we can’t read too much (or anything really) into one Summer League game, but the Pelicans were near the bottom of the league in 3-point shooting last season and we didn’t see any signs last night that there is an answer on the Summer League roster.
That being said, I expect they will bounce back in game two now that they’ve hopefully shaken off the rust.