If you’ve been paying attention to my video descriptions, I’ve been saying for the past two years that the New Orleans Pelicans were darkhorse candidates for making the Western Conference Finals. Unlike most things I write in my video descriptions, which are jokes, this was not a joke. I truly thought that the Pelicans’ roster was stacked enough to be within one playoff series of the NBA Finals.
Laugh at me all you want. I don’t care. I am a true man, and as such, I can admit when I make gross errors in my appraisal of an NBA team’s playoff-worthiness. I also thought that under no circumstances would the Pacers ever make the playoffs this year. Not with Monta Ellis. No way. So that’s another funny thing I was wrong about.
Back to the Pelicans. What went so wrong? I wasn’t the only person who thought that they would improve on their eight-seed appearance from the 2014-15 season. In honor of their disappointing season, I have created DTB’S OFFICIAL LIST OF REASONS THE PELICANS SUCKED [NOT POWER RANKINGS] 2015-16 EDITION.
-Injuries. The Pelicans had a lot of them. Most notably, Quincy Pondexter was out for the entire season. If Quincy Pondexter had been healthy for seventy games or so, and not zero, then the Pelicans obviously would have made the WCF. That’s how good Quincy Pondexter is. He provides spacing and defense like no other. Think about prime Rashard Lewis for a moment. That’s like Pondexter except Pondexter plays defense. I think the Pelicans win 50 games if Pondexter is healthy and all other things are equal. And make the WCF.
-Injuries part deux. Some other dudes were injured at various points. Yawn. Who cares. Quincy Pondexter.
-Point guard play. Every team wants to come out of the gate quick, but it’s hard to do that when your opening-night PG is Ish Smith. Don’t get me wrong, I love me a heaping dish of Ish, but as a starter he’s bottom five league-wide. When Jrue Holiday came back, things were a little better, but it still didn’t result in wins. Since this contradicts my firmly held notion that Holiday is actually a good PG, I’m shifting the blame onto Toney Douglas and Norris Cole. Tim Frazier doesn’t get any blame because he was put onto a roster with so many injuries that it was literally impossible to win a game, even if he were to play like prime Chris Paul, which, coincidentally, he did.
-Anthony Davis. This is an Anthony Davis video so I couldn’t get away with not giving him his own paragraph. He basically regressed from the previous season where he was a legit MVP candidate. What he really needed to do was make a fourth-year leap and start averaging 28/14 on 58% shooting instead of 24/10 on 49% shooting. It’s been shown repeatedly that a single superstar can’t carry a team deep into the playoffs by himself, but that’s wrong. Davis should have been able to do it. Also, stop taking threes dude. They’re tanking your shooting percentage.
-Tyreke Evans. It says here he only appeared in 25 games. What was he doing for the other 57? Smoking weed? At least Quincy Pondexter had an excuse. Trade this bum. Or don’t re-sign him or whatever. I don’t feel like looking up the deets on his contract.
-Defense. DownToBuck doesn’t care about defense but apparently the Pelicans didn’t play any. I rest my case.
-Coaching. Alvin Gentry is supposed to be a high-powered offensive coach and he was given a high-powered offensive team to coach. Yet, they finished 18th in offensive rating. I think I read somewhere that the offense was too complicated for the players to run effectively, or something. Since I’m not BBallBreakdown I can’t verify these claims, but that sounds to me like the players were just too stupid to win games. Or that the coach was too stupid to realize that his players were too stupid to run plays. I bet Quincy Pondexter could have run those plays. Just saying.
-Team name. Pelicans are not intimidating at all. I could walk up to a Pelican and punch it in its stupid beak and it would probably just sit there. You couldn’t do that with a buck. Or a bull. Or a wizard.
-Useless starters. Alonzo Gee shouldn’t ever start games. Neither should Omer Asik. Or Dante Cunningham. Or Norris Cole. Or Luke Babbitt (sorry Luke I only like you ironically). Yet all these guys started significant amounts of games. Anthony Davis should have been able to carry these guys, and he sort of did, but you’re not making the WCF with janky-ass starting lineups like the Pelicans were trotting out.
So that’s it. I just listed all the reasons why the Pelicans failed to live up to my own, perhaps unrealistic, expectations for them. At the end of the day, I thought that a Holiday-Gordon-Evans-Anderson-Davis lineup would crush everybody offensively, but that lineup never really happened (33 minutes all season?), and even when it did it wasn’t that great. Sorry for being wrong. Starting now, I will officially stop giving any predictions, at least for the next few weeks until everybody forgets how wrong I was.