Thunder dominate Pelicans to take 2-0 lead

You may have had that feeling. After missing a golden opportunity to steal game one at Oklahoma City, one of two things were going to happen in game two.

The New Orleans Pelicans, the best road team in the NBA, would take game two after proving they could play with the top-seeded Oklahoma City Thunder and Brandon Ingram would bounce back from a subpar game.

That was one scenario.

The other was that the superior, deeper home team, a team that was not efficient in game one, would bounce back and play to its potential in game two.

Unfortunately for the Pelicans, the latter proved to be true.

While Ingram scored more and while the Pelicans shot the ball better, the Thunder destroyed the Pelicans on the defensive end of the floor, getting what they wanted and shooting the ball extremely well in a dominant performance as the Thunder drilled the Pelicans 124-92.

The Thunder were clearly more physical than the Pelicans and the physicality paid off.

It was never a contest.

On many, many occasions this season when the Pelicans have lost, we have written and mentioned on talk shows on The Ticket 106.1 FM that the Pelicans were outworked and got pushed around and did not match the opponent’s physicality.

You can replay that statement and apply it to the game tonight.

The Pelicans hung tough for the first four minutes but after Oklahoma City took a 15-14 lead, the Thunder never trailed again.

Oklahoma City shot 59 percent from the field, 48.3 percent from 3-point range and 90 percent from the free throw line. The Thunder outscored New Orleans 42-21 from 3-point range.

The Pelicans defended poorly, make that very poorly and truly backed down and could not handle straight-line drives to the basket by the Thunder.

New Orleans shot it better than game one at 45.2 percent from the field but were still not good enough beyond the arc, shooting just 26.9 percent.

The Pelicans also committed 18 turnovers, eight on offensive fouls, which resulted in 22 points for the Thunder while Oklahoma City had 14 fast break points to six for the Pelicans.

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was superb, scoring 33 points.

Jonas Valanciunas led the Pelicans with 19 points. Brandon Ingram was a little better with 18 points but got pushed around again and the Pelicans were minus 30 points differential when Ingram was on the floor, worse on the team.

The Pelicans are coming home for games three and four Saturday and Monday.

Perhaps they will be spurred on by the change of scenery.

Of course, the Pelicans have not been good at home this season and lost both games to the Thunder at Smoothie King Center in the regular season.

It is okay to have hope but based on what we witnessed Wednesday night, don’t get your hopes up too high. Expect the worst and hope for the best. It will take the absolute best for the Pelicans to win a game in the series against a better, deeper team.