Following Saturday night's 109-95 loss at the hands of the San Antonio Spurs, the New Orleans Pelicans are in the midst of an early-season losing streak which now stretches to five straight defeats. Cornerstone superstar Anthony Davis is having none of it, and he called out his team for their defensive shortcomings after this latest defeat.
After starting the new campaign with four straight wins, the Pelicans have fallen off the cliff and are now 4-5. Davis believes that their defense — or lack thereof — is the main reason behind their struggles.
“We’re not playing defense, we’re not guarding anybody, we’re making the game hard on ourselves,” said Davis, via Pelicans.com. It shouldn’t be this easy (for the other team). It’s hard to score buckets in there and it’s so easy for them on the other end. We’re not physical. We’re not stopping anybody one-on-one. We’re just not playing basketball.”
The good news for the Pelicans is that it's way too early in the season to start panicking. For Davis, it's all about the fundamentals.
“We need to go back to the basics of guarding your man,” he added. “We’re just trying to do stuff on our own offensively at times. We started the game pretty well, moving the basketball, sharing the basketball, and as the game went on we start trying to do stuff on our own. They made a lot of tough shots, but we got to be able to make free throws. We got to make free throws, we got to sit down and guard somebody and we got to get back to running.”
This is a pretty strong message from one of the best players in the game today. Hopefully, his teammates are able to take this constructively as the Pelicans hope to get their season back on track at the soonest possible time.
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