Anthony Davis and Jrue Holiday are tagged as the superstars of the New Orleans Pelicans. As such, they are expected to be extra aggressive on offense. Though they both had a good offensive night, a longer glance at the stat sheet reveals that the two did not attempt a single free throw in Game 2 against the Golden State Warriors.
Davis had a monster performance with 25 points and 15 rebounds. Holiday, for his part, almost had a triple-double with 24 points, eight rebounds, and eight assists. Despite their efforts, they lost by a slim margin, 116-121.
Perhaps if the two had gone to the line at par with their season averages, the Pelicans would've won. In the regular season, Holiday attempted 2.9 free throws per game. Davis, on the other hand, attempted eight free throws per night.
Was the Warriors homecourt advantage working? Or did they just played clean defense that forced Holiday and Davis into really tough shots? Or maybe there weren't as aggressive as they should be?
Article Continues BelowIn a post-game interview, Pelicans head coach Alvin Gentry believed that the two played as aggressive as they could. As reported by Oleh Kosel of The Bird Writes:
“We played aggressive,” responded Head Coach Alvin Gentry in postgame. “I think both of them [Davis and Holiday] did. Jrue took the ball to the basket. As I said, we had 54 shots in the paint. I think that is being aggressive.”
If taking zero free-throw attempts from the charity stripe from both of his stars is aggressive, then maybe Gentry got his vocabulary mixed up.