The Pelicans’ playoff hopes may have gone up in smoke on Thursday at the hands of the Sacramento Kings in a blowout loss. With the team potentially able to move within percentage points of being the ninth seed, New Orleans came out slow and fell to the 13th seed.
The team will have little time to wallow in its loss, though, as Thursday and Friday marks the team’s lone back-to-back inside the bubble. The Pelicans will play the Wizards for the first time this season on Friday in search of a strong finish inside the bubble.
“What we have to do is that we have to still stay focused on winning every game we can down here and what happens from there, we’ll have to wait and see,” head coach Alvin Gentry said after Thursday’s loss. “But our goal is that we are playing Washington tomorrow. We’ve got to line up and we’ve got to be very good. That team is a team that plays extremely hard, too, and they have some scorers…but they’ve come down here and played extremely hard, also.
“Nothing is going to be easy down here so we’ll just have to regroup and look at it tomorrow on film and we’ll line up and play Washington again tomorrow.”
Unfortunately for the Pelicans, it appears the team’s remaining four games are not going to be much more than a formality. The Blazers’ win on Thursday evening moves them two games clear of New Orleans. Barring a complete collapse from Portland, the Pelicans likely will not be taking part in a play-in game, let alone the postseason.
For now, the Pelicans do need to treat the final four games as must-win situations but it likely will only serve to decrease their odds in the NBA lottery should they continue winning.
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