The New Orleans Pelicans Are Shredding Expectations in the NBA Playoffs
When DeMarcus Cousins went down with a busted Achilles with just fifteen seconds left in a 115-113 win over the Houston Rockets in January, it could have been the beginning of the death march for the New Orleans Pelicans. It probably should have been.
Since the previous All Star break when they traded for Boogie to chuck him next to Anthony Davis for the far and away best big man combo in the league, they’d never played better than they were playing at that time. Seven wins from eight, topping it off by beating the team that’d end up with the best record in the NBA. But then Cousins ruptured his heel trying to haul in his own missed free throw and it was same old Pellies.
Same old Pellies? Same old injured, unlucky Pellies? Same old relying on Anthony Davis to do everything Pellies? Try telling that to Damian Lillard right now. Try explaining that to Portland fans who just saw their team get swept in the first round of the playoffs by the Boogie-less Pelicans. How did this happen? Well, dear friend, cast your mind back a few years…
See, after Anthony Davis inspired a run to the playoffs in 2014-15, the Pelicans were supposed to build on their young superstar and forge a team worthy of competing in the postseason for years to come. Instead they never got close, dealing with injury upon injury. It was like they were cursed and that curse was almost certainly because they cut Corey Webster from the roster, let’s be honest. Anthony Davis missed 21 games, Eric Gordon missed 37, Tyreke Evans missed 57, Ryan Anderson missed 16, Jrue Holiday missed 17… they started 1-11 and never recovered.
You can write off a season like that if you can immediately get back to doing the business next time up and yet a dozen games into the 16-17 season the Pelicans were 2-10. In the opening game of the season Davis had 50 points, 15 rebounds, 5 assists, 5 steals, 4 blocks… and they still lost to the Denver Nuggets (a team that ended with a losing record). That was how it went. Anthony Davis, The Brow himself, couldn’t do it alone. Plus Jrue Holiday wasn’t at his best either, understandably too after missing those first dozen games on compassionate leave to help care for his wife who’d been diagnosed with a brain tumour (former USA women’s soccer international Lauren Holiday, and the tumour was successfully removed, don’t panic). Elsewhere E’Twaun Moore and Langston Galloway just weren’t doing it, while the less said the aborted Lance Stephenson experiment the better.
So they traded for DeMarcus Cousins. Out went Tyreke Evans, Langston Galloway, Buddy Hield and two 2017 picks that became Zach Collins and Frank Mason and in came Omri Casspi and Boogie. Casspi was swiftly waived but he was never meant to be the main course. Boogie Cousins, man. Boogie Cousins and Anthony Davis. Together.
It didn’t work. Boogie & Brow lost their first three games together and went 11-14 over the rest of the season, comfortably missing the playoffs. It was always a long shot. But the positive was that the combo did have a +4.0 net rating while together on the court. Surprisingly they were getting slightly outdone off the boards… but they picked that up the next season, improving in pretty much every area as their chemistry developed, making the rest of the league take notice. Then Boogie got hurt.
Fast forward to the present day and, oh damn, the Pelicans just swept the Portland Trail Blazers in the first round! Jrue Holiday is playing the best stuff of his career and has been for months now. Anthony Davis is Anthony Davis, unleashed and unguardable. Rajon Rondo is playing like a real basketballer. Nikola Mirotic, the man they traded for from Chicago a few days after Boogie got injured, has been a revelation. Suddenly dudes like E’Twaun Moore, Dante Cunningham and a couple others can simply be role players and they’re thriving at it.
There was a period of adjustment, of course. The Pellies lost five of six immediately after the Cousins injury… then they responded with a tough double OT win over the Brooklyn Nets. Nothing to brag about in itself, the Nets are a bit average, but New Orleans used that win to kickstart a ten-game winning streak, closing the season on a 20-8 run, including Ws in their last five, to win the sixth seed. And they haven’t looked back since.
DeMarcus Cousins: “I mean, that could've easily sucked the life out of the team. You know, they gathered themselves after a couple of games and got everything back on track. I couldn't be happier for this team.”
Basically, they’ve been forced to embrace a smaller lineup. They sliced and diced the Blazers by putting Davis at the five and Mirotic at four, providing plenty of shooting from their frontcourt, as well as their being a couple adaptable defenders capable of getting out and into a double team which just wreaked absolute havoc on Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum, who were already being hounded by Rondo and Holiday. Rondo who averaged 13.3 assists and Holiday who shot at 56.8% for 27.8 ppg in the series. Jrue scored 41 in the closeout game, which would’ve been a new Pelicans record in a playoff game had Anthony Davis not also scored 47.
They were already a team who played at pace under Alvin Gentry’s coaching but without Cousins they’ve taken that to the extreme. Gentry who has had his contract option picked up for next season, by the way. Which has unleashed Rajon Rondo to play his best stuff since he was a Celtic. In 683 minutes together this season, Rondo and Cousins were outscored by 7.1 pts/100 possessions. Easily the worst on the team among the twenty most used duos (for reference, the only two other pairs in the negatives were: Dante Cunningham/E’Twaun Moore & Ian Clark/Darius Miller).
Rondo’s lack of shooting was exaggerated by Cousins’ hoop-hoarding style, despite Rondo being signed largely because of his connection with Cousins from their season together in Sacramento. Cousins is a brilliant player, of course, and there’s a very interesting saga gonna happen as to how much the Pelicans are willing to offer a 27 year old big man coming off Achilles surgery when his contract runs up after the season, but he and Rondo simply weren’t a great match.
All goods. Sometimes a bugger gets injured and you have to readjust. Not all teams are capable of doing that but Anthony Davis gave New Orleans that opportunity. He played the whole Blazers series at centre despite having specifically said he prefers power forward in the past. He also just notched the first four playoffs wins of his career so probably a matter of priorities there. Davis was immense. He averaged nearly 39 minutes per game and never shot worse than 50% in any of them. All four contests he had at least a 20pt double-double:
- Game 1: 35 PTS (14/26 FG, 7/9 FT) | 14 REB | 1 AST | 2 STL | 4 BLK
- Game 2: 22 PTS (9/18 FG, 3/5 FT) | 12 REB | 1 AST | 2 STL | 2 BLK
- Game 3: 28 PTS (11/18 FG, 6/7 FT) | 11 REB | 2 AST | 3 STL | 2 BLK
- Game 4: 47 PTS (15/25 FG, 15/17 FT) | 11 REB | 1 AST | 3 BLK
Those numbers are a little MVP-ish, just quietly. Defensively he was astounding. You already know how good he can be at that end, those long arms snatching rebounds and steals, while offensively he continued to knock down shots with ease, be they trampoline alley-oops or step-back jumpers from the mid-range. Jusuf Nurkic had no idea what to do. If he went out with Davis or Mirotic (who sneakily scored 18 points per game, providing a crucial third scoring option that took them over the top) then Davis could roll back to the hoop or Holiday could go gliding to the rim. It’s a superb combination.
There’s some stuff here that can’t last, stuff that the Golden State Warriors (sorry, Spurs fans) are going to look to take advantage of in the next round. The pace they play at can be taxing, especially when they’re having to do so much on defence. Hence a team that swept the series vs Portland was outscored in three of the four fourth quarters (and tied in the other).
There’s a good chance that Steph Curry won’t be back for the next round, at least not for the first few games, but the Dubs still throw heaps of dynamic guards at you to mimic the Lillard/McCollum thing. Similarly Rajon Rondo’s gambling passes are going to have a tougher time finding the mark against a superior defensive team. Then it’s a matter of whether they can maintain the 40% shooting from deep that they managed as a team in round one.
But then they defied expectations to get this far so maybe we’d better not sing that song yet.
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