Pelicans providing reason to believe

NEW ORLEANS — Dare we believe the Pelicans are evolving?

After all, this is team that has spent the first three months of the season looking as though it’s destined to finish 41-41. Modest success has always been followed by a comparable degree of failure and vice versa.

Not once had they gone more than three games above .500 or more than two games below .500 through 45 games.

Then came Monday night.

After twice before failing to get to four games above .500, they finally made it to 25-21 with a 132-128 double-overtime victory against the Chicago Bulls in the Smoothie King Center.

It wasn’t just the fact that they went four games above .500 for the first time in three years that made this game about as significant as an NBA game in January can be, it was the manner in which it happened.

New Orleans fell behind by 18 points midway through the fourth quarter and appeared headed to a loss that would be perfectly consistent with the inconsistency of this season.

But this game was different and maybe that’s because this team is becoming different than it has been. Maybe it’s capable of breaking out of the flatline of the first half of the season and charting an upward trajectory.

After digging that deep hole in the fourth quarter the Pelicans played like this game meant something more than just one of 82, more than just another predictable loss because it was the first game after a win for a team that always seems to follow wins with losses and losses with wins.

DeMarcus Cousins had a triple-double that wasn’t your run-of-the-mill triple-double. In 51-plus minutes he finished with 44 points, 24 rebounds and 10 assists. To put that in perspective, the last time an NBA player had at least 40 points, 20 rebounds and 10 assists in the same game it was 1972 and the player was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the Bucks Jabbar, not the Lakers Jabbar.

Though the extra time enabled Cousins join Jabbar in the record book, he still had a triple double — 33-15-10 — in regulation.

Cousins scored the first five points of the second overtime and made one of the biggest plays of the game when he followed his own miss in the final half minute and slapped the ball to teammate Jrue Holiday for an offense rebound that forced Chicago to foul, down by two with the shot clock off.

As Cousins stood at the foul line, many in the crowd chanted “M-V-P, M-V-P,” a chorus that had echoed for Anthony Davis when he stood at the foul line during the remarkable fourth-quarter comeback.

Of course, it’s a virtual certainty that neither of the All-Star Game starters will actually be named league MVP, partly because each is so valuable that it’s difficult to make the case that either is more valuable than anyone else in the league.

Davis, who had a mere 34-9-5 compared to Cousins’ numbers, fouled out with 2:05 left in the first overtime, leaving it to Cousins and Holiday to make sure the comeback wasn’t wasted.

It wasn’t.

As confounding a player as Cousins can be — he matched his NBA-worst average per-game average with five turnovers — he’s a remarkable talent and someone this franchise can’t allow to get away when his contract expires this summer.

Holiday, who New Orleans locked in to a huge contract last off-season, continues to thrive as a combo guard more than the point guard he had been before the new contract.

What’s most encouraging about his recent play is that he’s gradually playing more minutes at the point as soon-to-be 32-year-old Rajon Rondo and soon-to-be 36-year-old Jameer Nelson see their minutes reduced.

A shooting guard who was often out of sorts as a point guard, Holiday gained a greater level of comfort earlier this season as Rondo’s arrival in the off-season allowed him to play mostly at shooting guard.

Now his minutes at the point are going up and so is his level of play. Even though Monday wasn’t one of his better games — 12 points, six assists, 5-of-17 shooting, 2-of-6 on 3-pointers — his numbers over the last six games are 23.2 points per game, 5.8 assists, 4.5 rebounds, 2.3 steals, 54 percent field-goal shooting and 41 percent on 3-pointers.

Not coincidentally New Orleans has won five of those games.

Perhaps we can dare to believe.