New Orleans Pelicans schedule lookahead: Ranking Week 24’s games by level of importance
By Mat Issa
New Orleans Pelicans (37-37) vs. Denver Nuggets (50-24) – Thursday, March 30th @ 10 PM Eastern Standard Time
If the Pelicans emerged from the play-in tournament with the eighth seed in the Western Conference Playoffs, guess who would be sitting there waiting for them in the first round? Yep. The Denver Nuggets.
So far, the Pelicans have lost both of their games against the Nuggets this year (by only a combined margin of ten points). This game presents an opportunity for them to both get the proverbial monkey off their back against a potential playoff opponent and test out some lineup/tactics that they could try to use against them during the game’s second season.
There are two reasons why this game isn’t higher on our importance rankings. First, as we said, the Pelicans’ spot in the standings is still in flux, so it is not for sure yet that they will be playing the Nuggets in the first round of the playoffs. Second, the Nuggets are 13 games ahead of the Pelicans in the standings with eight games left to go for each team, so beating them won’t allow New Orleans to usurp Denver in the standings (like it will for the next two teams).