With the NBA’s return now official, the New Orleans Pelicans will be apart of the 22-team field. The hyper-abbreviated regular season will feature an eight-game sprint to the finish line. New Orleans, and the rest of the teams chasing the eighth seed, were given a lifeline as they need only be four games back of the eighth seed by the end of the sprint to enter a play-in tournament.
As it stands, the Pelicans, Trail Blazers and Kings all sit 3.5 games back of the Grizzlies. New Orleans will have a chance to play both the Grizzlies and Kings multiple times in the eight-game span and will have a chance to make up ground in the race.
There will be lots of questions surrounding not just the Pelicans but the rest of the NBA. But focusing in on the Pelicans, here are three questions they’ll need to answer to make a playoff run.