New Orleans Pelicans schedule lookahead: Ranking this week’s games by level of importance
By Mat Issa
New Orleans Pelicans (33-37) vs. Los Angeles Clippers (37-34) – Saturday, March 25th @ 10:30 PM Eastern Standard Time
Remember that puncher’s chance of making the playoffs without having to participate in the play-in tournament that we mentioned? Well, this is it.
The Los Angeles Clippers currently sit at fifth in the West – 3.5 games ahead of the twelfth-seeded Pelicans. And while it is unlikely that they can make up that type of ground this late in the dance, beating them on Saturday (and then again when they host them on April 1st) would go a long way toward making that pipe dream a reality.
There is good news and bad news here. The good news is that in the only other time the two teams have played each other so far (October 30th), the Pelicans destroyed the Clippers by a convincing 31 points in their own building.
The bad news about that win is that it came with a healthy Williamson (more on this in a moment) and without a healthy Kawhi Leonard. The latter will almost certainly be participating in this game (barring any unforeseen circumstances), as the game is not part of a back-to-back slate for the Clippers (as you’ll recall, part of Leonard’s load management plan includes sitting out one leg of his team’s back-to-backs).