The New Orleans Pelicans came alive in the third quarter of Friday’s win against Washington largely because of play off the bench from Nicolo Melli and Frank Jackson. The pair ignited the team with their defense and helped the Pelicans remain mathematically alive for a spot in the play-in tournament.
The team exited Friday’s contest with all eyes set on a must-win match-up against the San Antonio Spurs. With the two teams occupying the 10th and 11th spots in the Western Conference, Sunday’s game will all but eliminate one of the sides from contention for the play-in tournament.
After the game, the team talked about the need to carry over lessons learned from the win against Washington into Sunday’s game.
“Be aggressive,” Jrue Holiday said. “Be aggressive. I think we were aggressive today, which is awesome. I think in the third and fourth quarter, we got into the bonus kind of early. I feel like that’s something we can control a little better the next game. I just think being aggressive and not making it easy for opponents is something that’ll benefit us.”
Jackson, who finished with a plus-minus of +30 in Friday’s win, also noted that the team must return to its pre-hiatus form on the defensive end of the court. Inside the bubble, the Pelicans have a defensive rating of 111.8, over two points worse than their 109.2 rating between Zion Williamson’s debut and the lockdown.
“We have to remind ourselves who we are defensively,” he said. “It starts at that end of the ball because I know when we’re into people and when we’re applying that pressure, it gets us going offensively. I think we need to remind ourselves to have that same intensity on defense and keep rolling and keep knocking these games out.”
New Orleans’ fate is entirely out of their hands moving forward as the team sits 1.5 games back of Portland for the ninth seed with three games to go. Portland’s loss to the Clippers on Saturday afternoon was huge from the Pelicans, but they will need more Blazers losses on top of winning the remainder of their own games.
To finish unbeaten, the Pelicans will almost certainly have to up their game on the defensive end akin to Friday’s second-half[lawrence-related id=25165,25073,25055] performance.