Pelicans losing skid reaches six games with 118-97 loss to Mavericks

The New Orleans Pelicans dropped their sixth consecutive game, and their third straight at home, falling to the Dallas Mavericks 118-97.

Since the start of the 2015-16 season, the Pelicans have 12 losing streaks of four games or more.

New Orleans is 0-2 against the Mavericks this season, as they join the Toronto Raptors, Oklahoma City Thunder, and Houston Rockets as teams with at least two wins and no losses against the Pelicans.

Brandon Ingram led the Pelicans with 24 points and six assists. Jrue Holiday added 18 points, four rebounds, and four assists. JJ Redick (12) and Josh Hart (11) were the only other players to reach double figures.

Newly-minted Western Conference Player of the Month Luka Dončić was as good as advertised, with 33 points, a career-high 18 rebounds, and five assists in only 28 minutes of action.

20 games into this season, Luka Doncic has 614 points, 206 rebounds and 188 assists.

Russell Westbrook is the only player in NBA history to hit all three marks through the first 20 games of a season, and he played 38 more minutes than Luka has. Russ was also eight years older.

— Andy Bailey (@AndrewDBailey) December 4, 2019

Dončić wasn’t needed down the stretch as the Pelicans could manage only 44 second half points, their lowest total of the season.

It took a special kind of bad to lose a home game against a team that only shot 43 percent from the floor, but the Pelicans were able to find it.

New Orleans matched its season-worst shooting performance by making just over 40 percent of their shots from the field. Dragging down the shooting percentage like an anchor attached to a helium balloon was the team’s shooting from deep.

The Pelicans were a combined 11-of-42 on their three point attempts (26.8%). The starting five was 5-for-24, with Redick (2-8) and Lonzo Ball (2-10) repeatedly missing the mark.

Reggie Miller: “Put the ball on the deck. You are open for a reason.” After another missed 3 by Lonzo. #WontBowDown

— Pro Pels Talk (@ProPelsTalk) December 4, 2019

Outside of Ingram’s continued strong play, there was nothing positive of note to take away from this game.

Besides shooting the basketball in a manner that suggested many of them had just learned the game that day, the Pelicans were outrebounded, outhustled, outplayed, out-coached, and just outclassed by the Mavericks on a night when Dallas didn’t come close to playing its best.

Unfortunately, this has become par for the course for this team. Placed anywhere near a winnable situation, the Pelicans are as adept at finding ways to lose as they have been inept over the last 10 days.

“Sometimes it’s the first half,” said Holiday. “Sometimes it’s finishing games. Sometimes it’s coming out of the second half. A little bit of the same. A little bit different.”

Huh?

You don’t have to be steeped in basketball knowledge or experience to provide that insight. That’s not an answer. As the captain of this team, Jrue Holiday isn’t required to throw a single member of his team under the bus, but if Pelicans fans can’t have victory, they at least demand some level of accountability.

The Pelicans have played in 45 clutch minutes, as determined by https://t.co/O8enJOu6Y5. In those minutes, they have a -35.2 net rating. They're shooting 28.8 percent from the field (29th) and have a 79.1 offensive rating (30th).

— Oaken Bucket Haver (@JacobRude) December 3, 2019

Brandon Ingram has tried to hold himself accountable, but again, there doesn’t seem to be the requisite acknowledgement that this situation isn’t good. No matter what has befallen the team due to injuries or anything else, losing this way has to be frustrating.

“I think we are fine,” said Ingram about his team’s current confidence level. “We are getting the stuff that we want to get. We just have to step into it and knock the shots. I missed shots tonight. A lot of guys missed shots tonight that were good looks for the fourth quarter so we just [have to] continue to stay together.”

“I think if we can have a little more of a sense of urgency on the defensive end we’ll be fine.”

Why isn’t there more urgency on the defensive end? Isn’t that what Jeff Bzdelik was brought in to instill? Why has a former elite level defender in Lonzo Ball, turned into a non-factor?

“You’ve got to be able to score and we couldn’t get the ball in the basket tonight,” said Alvin Gentry. “At the end of the third quarter, they were shooting 39%. We gave up eight threes in the fourth quarter and they shot 55% so we were – we never had the opportunity to really kind of make a run at it because you’ve got to be able to get the ball in the basket.”

There’s the rub. On nights like this, when the Pelicans play fairly well defensively through three quarters, they can’t make a shot. On the nights that they’re making shots, they can’t get stops.

It’s always something.

“The bottom line…you gotta find a way to win home games,” Gentry continued. “We haven’t been able to do that yet. We haven’t been able to sustain anything at home and on the road. I know have injuries, and I know we have that, but it doesn’t matter. You gotta be able to win home games, and we haven’t been able to do that.”

In my opinion…
One of the biggest reasons why NBA basketball 🏀 has had a hard time finding a consistent audience in NOLA…
No sustained success whatsoever. https://t.co/ff1RbyUNXV

— Fletcher Mackel (@FletcherWDSU) December 4, 2019

The Pelicans now face a daunting schedule that includes 13 games against teams with a combined record of 144-116 (.553). Of those 13 games, eight are against teams .500 or better, starting with the Mavericks again on Saturday, and followed by trips to Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Minnesota, Portland, and Denver.

The Miami Heat got off to a 10-31 start during the 2016-17 season, before doing a complete 180 and finishing the season 31-10 and just missing the playoffs, so anything is still possible.

“Fighters keep fighting,” Gentry said when asked about his mindset. “We’re 21 games into the season, so fighters keep fighting. We’ll find a way to dig ourselves out of this.”

“To me the big thing is, are you a competitor? If you’re a competitor, you’re gonna keep grinding it, and we’re going to figure this thing out. No one ever said it was gonna be easy.”

But, the New Orleans Pelicans as presently constructed don’t provide any compelling argument that would suggest that such a run lives within them.

A very real possiblity exists that the Pelicans could enter 2020 with single-digit wins and without a single minute of action from their budding franchise player.

In all likelihood the Pelicans will be playing those games without top overall pick Zion Wiliamson. There has still been no real update on Wiliamson’s condition, other than the fact that he hasn’t resumed any on court activities. Now, word is that the rookie phenom won’t be available in two weeks, pushing back the original six to eight week timetable ever further down the road.

As I reported on @NBAonTNT, Zion Williamson “turned a corner” this week. However, the team is erring on the side of caution and his return will “definitely” come outside of the 6-8 week window initially projected. #NOPvsDAL

— Kristen Ledlow (@KristenLedlow) December 4, 2019

That won’t be a welcome thought for fans, who hoped that Williamson could at the very least provide a great show as the team went through its growing pains.

For now the pain belongs to the ticket holders and anyone else who entered the season with great optimism and joy. If it lasts much longer, we may all need a morphine drip.