Eric Paschall turns in fantastic effort, but Warriors lose to Pelicans

Without D’Angelo Russell, Eric Paschall picked up the slack for Steve Kerr’s team, but he couldn’t help the team avoid a 108-100 loss.

On Sunday night, for the Golden State Warriors, the Big Easy was anything but.

Despite a 30-point effort from standout rookie Eric Paschall, Golden State couldn’t keep pace with the tandem of Jrue Holiday (22 points, eight rebounds, nine assists) and JJ Redick (26 points, 6-for-11 from 3-point territory), as the Pelicans scored a 108-100 victory over Steve Kerr’s team.

Paschall became the first member of this year’s rookie class to record multiple 30-point games, as he scored 34 points in the club’s 127-118 win over the Portland Trail Blazers back on November 4. He has been one of the few bright spots on a Warriors team that has now lost seven consecutive games.

With the loss, the Warriors fell to 2-12 on the regular season and dropped the first game on their four-game swing, which will also include stops in Memphis, Dallas and Salt Lake City.

The contest also happened to be the first that D’Angelo Russell missed after being announced with a sprained right thumb on Saturday. Russell is expected to miss at least the next two weeks.

As for the game itself, the Warriors trailed throughout, but managed to cut a 17-point deficit to just three in the game’s third quarter. Still, the team shot just 37.3 percent from the field over the course of the game’s first three quarters and simply couldn’t slow Holiday down in the fourth quarter, where he shot 5-for-7 and scored 12 points.

Although the final margin happened to be just eight points, the Pelicans led by as many as 15 during the game’s final frame, and it’s fair to say that the outcome of this one was never really in doubt.

For the Warriors, aside from Paschall’s 30 points, the team got 19 points off the bench from Ky Bowman and a 14-point, six-rebound effort from Glen Robinson III.