Brandon Ingram had a bit of a wacky Wednesday individual stat line in a lopsided 132-112 home win over the Charlotte Hornets, but the New Orleans Pelicans were downright historic shooting from beyond the arc. The cause and effect is obvious. Coach Willie Green's pairing of Jordan Hawkins and Trey Murphy III has been getting much more run lately and it's becoming clear the two young sharpshooters need to spend more court time with the Pelicans' pair of All-Stars.
Ingram went 7-of-11 from three-point range but made only one two-point shot, going 1-8 inside the arc. However, he also posted 10 rebounds and dished out 10 assists for his third career triple-double. The Pelicans shared the ball exceptionally well, getting 16 assisted buckets in their first 16 shots, and it led to open looks for Hawkins, Murphy and CJ McCollum. New Orleans' ‘right shooter, right shot' approach is clearly working, as that trio alone went 15-of-30 from beyond the arc against Charlotte.
“We’ve got three snipers out there, with CJ, Hawk and Trey that do this every single night,” Ingram bragged after the game. “They were just in rhythm tonight and we just kept finding them.”
Pelicans have to time to get creative with lineups
Hawkins and Murphy are force multipliers for Green's defensive-minded Pelicans. The duo loves throwing logo-deep daggers at defenses stretched paper thin by the gravity of Zion Williamson and Ingram. Thankfully, New Orleans has another 40 or so games to get creative and find out just how much mileage Green can get from these two young shooters in the postseason.
“It’s hard for teams to match up with that shooting and spacing, especially when you put the ball in [Williamson's] hands or [Ingram's] hands and you have shooting around those guys,” Green explained after the win. “We know in order to score against the best teams and be a highly efficient offense, we have to be willing to take catch-and-shoot threes, open threes.”
The third-year coach has to find more time and maybe get a bit more creative in how Hawkins and Murphy are utilized. Of course, this being the Big Easy, injuries have played their part in limiting opportunities to play them together.
Murphy missed the first 19 games of the season, with Hawkins filling admirably in as the Pelicans' sniper off the bench. The rookie was even setting team and NBA records, but then Green sat him for long stretches once Murphy returned on December 1st. He went from averaging over 30 minutes per game in November to just 12 a night in December.
Hawkins and Murphy have only gotten 82 total minutes together, but New Orleans has set nets ablaze during those brief stretches. Lineups featuring both players sport a 138.7 offensive rating and true shooting percentage of 69.2, per NBA.com/stats, numbers that would lead the league by a wide margin. Need more convincing? The Hawkins-Murphy tandem boasts a +29.2 net rating, the highest of any two-man lineup on the team with more than 10 games played together.
Subbing the Pelicans' two shooters in for CJ McCollum and either Herb Jones or Jonas Valanciunas gets them on the court with their two former All-Stars. That's an easy, straightforward approach, but the rest of the in-game rotations will have to be sorted out.
Green has to find out how McCollum, Hawkins and Murphy function as a trio. Perhaps it's also as simple as giving them a rebounder like Larry Nance Jr. and a defensive stopper like Jones or Dyson Daniels to fill out the lineup. Perhaps the three-shooter strategy is a step too far strategically. There is only one way to find out, and the Pelicans might as well have fun doing it now.
Shooters shoot better, have more fun when shooting often
Hawkins and Murphy see the game the same way but need more time to build chemistry. Neither has played with such a counter-balancing scoring threat on the opposite wing, so they are both working with more space and options than ever before.
“It’s really fun out there,” Hawkins said of playing with ‘Trigga Trey'. “I don’t think I’ve played with a guy who can shoot the ball like that, arguably shoot the ball better than me, like, ever, in my life.”
New Orleans has shot at least 40% on three-point attempts in eight of the past 10 games. Four of the team's best five games accuracy-wise have come after the calendar flipped to 2024. Unsurprisingly, Hawkins has seen an increase in playing time this January. The former UConn star has more games with 20+ minutes (six) than nights with 10 or fewer (three).
Hawkins is responding best when shouldering more responsibility. His fingerprints (16 made three-pointers, 69 points) are all over the three most recent wins. A few more stats mark the stark contrast between how Green is using the team's most recent draft pick and the production increase that can be expected.
Hawkins has played 82 minutes in the last three games and 130 over the last six. He logged 108 minutes in the entire month of December. Hawkins is at 52% from in January (23-of-45), but was down at 28.6% during December's rotational demotion. After hitting six triples in the final month of 2023, the 21-year-old has sank six three-pointers in a game twice just since New Year's Day.
That has to be enough evidence to get Hawkins more incorporated into the game plan on a nightly basis.
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