Davis collided with Paul while the All-Star point guard was dribbling up court. However, we learned soon after that he had escaped major injury and had only suffered a knee contusion.
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“You saw the play with your own eyes, draw your own conclusions”, Pelicans coach Alvin Gentry told reporters. Whether it’s fair or not, fans expect more out of this resilient team and the players and coaching staff should have even more ambitious expectations. We’ll go again tomorrow and we’ll see how shootaround goes and then we’ll determine what our course of action would be from there.
“It’s all part of the game”.
While teams do not generally like to raise the white flag this early in an National Basketball Association season, sometimes reality kicks in and demands it. The Pelicans were considered a legitimate title contender before the season started, but they have not played anywhere near expectations.
The Pelicans’ Tyreke Evans (injured knee) is listed as doubtful.
The Pelicans were led by Anthony Davis, who scored 17 points and pulled down six rebounds.
“… I feel like I could play a lot better, just like I’m pretty sure everybody else feels like they could play a lot better. Now we have to have some other guys step up and do the same thing”. “I can’t afford to go down”.
New Orleans (4-13) made a push late in the fourth quarter, but crucial buckets from Hayward and Burks stemmed the run.
Still, the fact remains that if the Pelicans were simply able to prevent slow starts in the first quarter they would be in an infinitely better position to avoid blowouts and try to make the game competitive.
“Most of all, we sustained it, pretty much. I just didn’t think we matched their intensity, and the game got out of hand right from the start”.
Anthony Davis had another huge outing for the New Orleans Pelicans, but it wasn’t enough to overcome a team effort by the Utah Jazz.
Brandon Knight led the Suns (7-8) with 29 points and 10 assists, while Jon Leur tallied 20 points and 12 rebounds. “One of those hurt players has been the 6’10” Davis, who’s already missed three games this year.
“It’s hard to guard when you’re getting that many contributions from everybody”, Hayward said.
“We should be better than this”.
And most importantly, holding the Pelicans to 90 points, continuing a trend of either defending poorly and allowing a gang of points or defending well and holding opponents below 100. Instead, Asik was a whopping -16 in eight minutes, going 0-3 with just two rebounds.
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Using sharp ball movement off pick and roll actions the Pelicans had no answer for, the Clippers ripped off 61 first half points en route to a 21-point lead, assisting on 19 of their first 25 field goals while turning the ball over just twice.
