On January 27, 2025, the New Orleans Pelicans dropped to 12-34 after another deflating loss, this time to the Toronto Raptors. On the bright side, the Pelicans may not have gotten the best of the Raptors on the scoreboard tonight, but they did make major headway in terms of lottery odds, as Toronto will be one of their primary competitors for the top draft pick. This win moved the Raps to 13-32.
The Pelicans will ideally try to lose as many games as possible for the remainder of the season. Still, the way they've racked up these losses has been a cause for concern. At the beginning of the year, they racked up Ls due to their sheer number of absences from injuries. Those defeats were practically inevitable and unavoidable, as New Orleans was missing up to eight of their highest-paid players at one point in time.
Now, with most of the team healthy and available again, the Pelicans have shown their true promise. After this latest loss, they're now 7-7 in January. Losing against the Raptors was indeed a step in the right direction, but the way they lost was highly discouraging and a good encapsulation of one of their most glaring issues all season.
Pelicans put up another offensive dud against the Raptors
New Orleans fell to Toronto, 104-113. Just a quick glance at the final score reveals that the Pelicans held their own on defense but couldn't muster up enough offense to come away victorious. In fact, they only put up 40 total points in the first half, leading to a 16-point deficit at intermission that proved too steep to overcome.
They managed just 104 points despite getting 31 on 13-18 shooting from Zion Williamson, who was essentially unstoppable attacking the cup. Toronto tried putting their centers Jakob Poeltl and Orlando Robinson on him, just for Z to blow by them repeatedly. When they stuck smaller defenders on him, he just went through them.
Despite having a walking mismatch like that available to them, the Pelicans' offense constantly stalled and fell into hideous ruts. Unfortunately, New Orleans doesn't have any rhyme or rhythm to their attack. Anytime Zion got to the basket for an easy deuce, it was a product of him just putting his head down and refusing to be denied. Most of his buckets didn't come from designed plays or within the flow of the offense; he would just walk the ball down and dominate his matchup.
Whenever he wasn't doing that, they looked completely lost. Some people might want to blame Head Coach Willie Green, who took his frustrations out on a referee and was thrown out halfway through the fourth quarter. However, we've seen these Pelicans run a sensible and successful offense this season. It hasn't been often, evidenced by their abysmal record, but the structure is there.
Unfortunately, with Zion constantly coming in and out of the lineup, it's impossible for this team to build any rhythm with him in the game. He's by far their best player and is nearly unstoppable, which he again showed against the Raptors, so the natural instinct would be to give him the ball. When he's on the court, all the other Pelicans just defer to him and hope that he can get them a bucket. When he doesn't, they settle for a bad look at the end of the shot clock instead.
This has been a recurring theme this season. It's why they're just 4-8 with Zion in the lineup this season and why they average just 109.8 points in the games he plays. The silver lining is that this could actually work in their favor. If they keep intermittently resting Zion and reinserting him into the lineup, they'll prevent any potential momentum from building and rack up losses while building up Z's trade value for next season and beyond.