If Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde had to agree on a basketball team to follow, they could do a lot worse than the New Orleans Pelicans (45-30). Willie Green had the team on pace for 50 wins and fighting for fourth place at the end of March thanks to a 3-1 road trip. Now the squad is trying to survive a 1-3 start to a six-game homestand in hopes of maintaining a top-six seed.
The Pelicans are now 21-16 inside the Smoothie King Center and 24-14 everywhere else, including Las Vegas. Zion Williamson's All-NBA campaign got another boost against the Phoenix Suns but the team's small-ball lineup left much to be desired.
The insistence on going small is leading to Green giving mixed messages after losses. The third-year coach wants a defensively stout team capable of rebounding at all times. However, the sample size with Williamson, CJ McCollum, Trey Murphy III, Herb Jones, and Larry Nance Jr. is large enough to suggest it's not working (-2.7 Net Rating). Replace Nance Jr. with Brandon Ingram and the Net Rating drops to an abysmal -22.6.
However, Willie Green believes the “resilient” group needs to be “tougher” on the boards. Green elaborated on the small-ball approach after the Pelicans April Fool's Day home loss to the Suns.
“I thought it looked better. There was more space,” Green noted. “It made Nurkic have to guard Zion a bit more and he had to honor our wings and guards that were spaced out,” explained Green. “(The small ball lineup) has to do a better job of finishing defensive possessions so when we are small, or big it does not matter. They out-rebounded us and that's unacceptable. We have to have a tougher mentality. Our guys know it.”
The Pelicans' simple, straightforward strategy was working during the regular season's holiday doldrum. Green's plan for the Suns was devised to take advantage of mismatches that exploit Jusuf Nurkic. The approach backfired, resulting in Devin Booker's 50-point night.
“Something we definitely talk about is spacing. Nurkic, we know he is going to sit in the lane. Put Zion at the elbow and just hit Larry. Now, you've got CJ, you've got Trey, you've got Herb coming off (a screen) and the dominoes fall. Once you do that you can loosen them up a bit,” Green explained. “(Nurkic) has to make sure he guards those plays but (the Suns) did a great job of just keeping him at the rim. He shadowed Zion wherever he went. He figured it out through the course of the game but we may have to get to a smaller unit to make him guard us.”
The problem was no one could contain Booker or grab a rebound. Phoenix's other two All-Stars, Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal, combined for 16 rebounds. The Pelicans as a team were credited for 37 all game. It's tough to take Green's small ball stand too seriously seeing how Jonas Valanciunas has been used lately. ‘Tough rebounder' might be the best way to describe the seven-foot Lithuanian with a respectable three-point shot.
Pelicans' small-ball plan is no longer surprising rivals
Teams are starting to catch on to the Pelicans. The Boston Celtics and Phoenix Suns parked their center in the paint, shading an extra defender toward Williamson whenever Jonas Valanciunas is not on the court. Larry Nance Jr. is having a career year from beyond the arc (44.1%) but is being ignored during this NBA Playoffs ramp-up run-in. Defenders are sagging off someone shooting 50% from three-point range over the last 15 games. That's an external scouting report signal that cannot be ignored going into the NBA Playoffs.
Still, Green remains encouraged by the locker room's ability to shake off a bad “soft mentality” night and rebound with a winning attitude.
“Tough loss but there are positives. I love our resilency. From the second quarter on, it was a better game for us but they really came out at us in that first quarter. It was a gut punch…Quite frankly we were soft in guarding (Devin Booker),” Green admitted. “We had a ‘soft' mentality when it came to being physical with him. He's a great player. You cannot allow him to be comfortable and that's what we did tonight.”
The plan will remain the same until Ingram returns from injury. Green's directions for Nance Jr. are unchanged, as are the burdens on Williamson to make things happen for largely stationary teammates.
“First, keep the floor spaced. Zion has got to continue to navigate those kinds of concepts,” Green said. “It's okay to hit our fives spaced out because our fives can make plays with our wings and guards. It's hard for their big to get back to them but another adjustment for us is just going small and making them have to guard us.”
That line of action still leaves rebounding exposed as the weak link. An inability to control the glass all but killed the team's momentum against Phoenix. The Suns grabbed four offensive rebounds in the first five minutes of the fourth quarter. It was demoralizing for a Pelicans squad that had finally fought back to within single digits. The Smoothie King Center started emptying out once Phoenix finished off those possessions.
“(Those four offensive rebounds by Phoenix) hurt us for sure,” Green admitted. “We have to be better. Their bigs do a great job. They seal you down (in the paint). Collectively, when we go small we have to be tougher. We have to be more physical. We have to gang rebound…We'll continue to adjust, get better, and go from there.”
What adjustments can be made from here though is the most pressing question for Green's Pelicans. Going small is seemingly going nowhere now that rival teams have caught on to the scheme.
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