Who are New Orleans Pelicans’ fans rooting for in the NBA Finals?

The 2023 NBA Finals between the one-seeded Denver Nuggets and the eighth-seeded Miami Heat are set to tipoff tomorrow at 8:30 PM Eastern Standard Time.

And in honor of the festivities beginning tomorrow, we thought we’d see who fans of the New Orleans Pelicans were rooting for in this matchup. So, we took to Twitter (follow us @PelicanDebrief) to get a temperature check on the fanbase.

Based on these results, it looks like the Nuggets narrowly edge out the Heat here for Pelicans’ fans rooting interest. Of the 57 votes we received, 30 went to the Nuggets, while 27 went to the Heat.

When you think about it, it makes sense that we didn’t have a lob-sided result here. Neither one of these teams is considered to be a bitter rival or is a team harboring a player the fanbase has a great deal of animosity toward.

Earlier this month, we ran a poll on whether or not fans were rooting for Anthony Davis during the playoffs. There, 81.4% of voters (we had 97 votes total) said they were not, indicating that fans still were mad at Davis for demanding a trade from the team. Here, we don’t have that kind of situation, so it would make sense that the vote is pretty much split down the middle.

I guess it is a little bit surprising that more fans didn’t vote for the Heat, given how improbable/Cinderella-esque the run they have gone during this postseason has been. But then again, maybe some people chose the Nuggets because the brand of basketball they play is more aesthetically pleasing to watch or because they play, like the Pelicans, in the Western Conference.

It’s also worth noting that 57 votes is an incredibly small sample size and (obviously) not fully representative of the entire fanbase at-large.

Hopefully, it won’t be too long before we don’t need to run a poll like this because our Pelicans are the team representing the Western Conference in the NBA Finals (and, of course, in that case, Pelicans fans would be rooting for the Pelicans!).