Them Pelly Woes

The first one of these Steve-o round-ups deliberately avoided making wider judgements about a team that came into this season with a new head coach, a couple new starters, their two best players both under the age of 24, trying to play a very different system of basketball, without a proper preseason, amidst a pandemic, with a heavy early road schedule... you get the idea. But at the time of writing this the team is 7-12 having lost ten of their last thirteen games and certain issues are no longer avoidable.

The most recent of these defeats was a ridiculous 118-109 loss to the Sacramento Kings in which De’Aaron Fox went bonkers in the fourth quarter to finish with 38 points (he scored a career-high 43 the last time these two teams met as well) as NOP blew a 10-point lead after three quarters against a poor defensive team. Steven Adams didn’t play that day due to the left calf tightness that took him out of the Houston Rockets game and has him questionable for the next one against the Phoenix Suns too (giving us a rare little window to be able to publish another Kiwi Steve article – damn these games come thick and fast this season). Even if he had though it might not have made a difference because despite what folks suggested about the lack of spacing and the old-timey values and the various limitations of the Zion Williamson + Steven Adams frontcourt... that’s not where things have been falling apart for this team.

Nope, the main issue is with their guards. And it begins at the three-point line where the Pelicans have the third worst 3PT% in the league (34.0%) whilst allowing the most three-point attempts on defence (41.6/g). Through 19 games they are being outscored by an average of 14 points a night at the three-point line. It’d be bad enough to get trounced on one side of the ball like that but to be getting sloshed from the perimeter both ways is a disaster. You’re not gonna win too many games that way. Case and point...

Forget the rest. That starting backcourt of Eric Bledsoe and Lonzo Ball has simply not been good enough. It’s not working. And that’s not necessarily down to the way those guys have played as much as it is the fit of the two of them on a team where Brandon Ingram and Zion Williamson are the two top scorers. That means a passing maestro like Ball is spending a lot of time off the ball and for a hesitant spot shooter that’s not ideal. Same as with Eric Bledsoe who hasn’t been anywhere near his All-NBA Defensive Team levels yet and whose athleticism with the ball in hand is going to waste playing as a third option spot shooter. Even Steven Adams gets caught up in this mix sometimes. His combo with Brandon Ingram setting screens and creating those shooting pockets for BI to stretch his picnic blanket out in is fantastic but there’s not a lot of pick and roll action with the other two which would lead to plenty more shooting opps for Adams.

Ball has been all over the place as a three point shooter. His reputation is as a terrible sniper but that’s unfair, that’s just people who stopped watching him when he left a bad situation with the Lakers. Ball shot 37.5% from deep last season. Problem is he’s slid back to 32.5% on a career-high 7.3 attempts per game this campaign. The weird thing about that is there are games where he’s been superb. He drilled SEVEN triples in the win against Milwaukee and is actually knocking them down at 41.7% in wins. But he’s shooting a tragic 18/69 (26.1%) from deep in losses and that’s a killer.

That unreliable shooting, as well as taking away his best asset (his passing) by having him off ball so often, makes everything worse for the Pellies. Put a bad shooter on the edge and nobody cares, that’s a spare defender that can double up on Ingram or help keep Williamson out of the lane. You could solve some of this by taking Ball or Bledsoe out of the first unit line-up... but the bench has been trash. JJ Redick is shooting 29.8% on three-pointers. Nickeil Alexander-Walker is shooting 30.1% (although he at least adds a threat off the dribble as well). And neither of them are half the defenders that Ball and Bledsoe each are.

Josh Hart is the only reserve who has delivered above expectations so he could be an option. Put Bledsoe’s downhill abilities alongside the bench lads and maybe that helps things for Redick as well. Except there’s another solution here that seems to be the one that Stan Van Gundy and especially David Griffin seem to be eyeing up instead...

The Trade Market

Lonzo Ball is on an expiring contract ($11m) and is unlikely to be offered the kind of cash that he can get in (restricted) free agency by a Pelicans team that just gave Brandon Ingram a huge deal, will be preparing to give Zion Williamson a similar one in a couple years, and quietly sorted Steven Adams with $15m for each of the next two seasons after his trade. Ball is also not improving this team – he has the lowest Offensive Rating of any of the starters. However he’s still averaging 12.6p/3.8r/4.8a per night and there are plenty of teams that could use his skill set in a much more efficient way.

JJ Redick is also on an expiring contract ($13m) and might be in the middle of a shooting slump but he’s one of the true knockdown deep-divers of his generation and there’s never been a contending team that didn’t want one more shooter to add to the mix. The trade market for Redick is a little tougher. He’s 36 years old and there’s apparently a feeling that he’ll a buyout candidate if nobody stumps up for him so the Pelicans are having to wait to see if anyone blinks on that. But there are teams that are keen on his services, no doubt about it.

Chances are that both of those blokes get traded and relatively soon. All the big hitters are on the scene already. Shams Charania reckons that Lonzo Ball and JJ Redick have both definitely been shopped around. Brian Windhorst mentioned the same Kelly Oubre-Lonzo Ball trade talk that Shams also alluded to, while adding that the Pels are happy to take calls on Eric Bledsoe as well. Redick in particular apparently wants to be traded – he lives on the East Coast and the Nets, 76ers, Celtics & Knicks been specifically mentioned as options. Redick’s minutes shrank significantly over that 1-5 road trip to the point where he hasn’t even played the last three games so a JJR move is almost certainly on the horizon. Lonzo Ball... that’s a wait and see but if they’re not gonna re-sign him then they’re going to trade him. Just a matter of where to and what for.

One guy who won’t be traded is Steven Adams because he’s ineligible. But this hypothetical from Alex Schiffer for The Athletic is a funky one to imagine:

“The James Harden trade essentially sent the Nets into trade asset bankruptcy as their only salaries now that they’d likely move are Dinwiddie or DeAndre Jordan, the latter of whom is considered untouchable and also Brooklyn’s lone competent center on its roster right now. It’s a shame Steven Adams can’t be traded this year because a deal that I bet GM Sean Marks would like is packaging those two and maybe a second-round pick or two to acquire his fellow New Zealand native who would be an upgrade down low.”

And it’s only now at the very end of this segment that we shall dare the fates themselves by mentioning the name: Bradley Beal. Can the Pelicans muster that kinda capacity? Doubtful. But as Lonzo’s dad would tell ya you’ve got to speak it into existence.

R-R-R-R-Rebounds

Before that cheeky calf strain, Steven Adams was cleaning up so much glass that birds were flying into him on the street. He’s been rebounding at a solid rate all season as he and Zion Williamson have starred in one of the best rebounding frontcourts going around but even within that context some of these numbers were crazy. After not grabbing more than 11 in any of the first 11 games, he had 15 boards in a win against Sacramento. Two games later he hauled in 16 away against Utah. Two games after that one, he did this against the Washington Wizards...

And then in the very next game it was the Milwaukee Bucks on the cards where this happened...

He actually got his first ever uniquely Steven Adams double-double in that one... 10 offensive boards and 10 defensive boards in the same game (though this wasn’t a career high... in December 2019 he had 20 points and 23 rebounds in a game against the Kings). Meanwhile as each of the other four starters all scored 20+ in that game compared to poor old Adams who bagged but a mere 4 points. His 20 came as a rebounder instead, same as how he only scored 6 against the Wiz to go with 18 boards. It’s a notable trend: his points tallies have dropped heaps, not scoring double-figures in any of his last six games, as his rebound numbers have skyrocketed.

STEVEN ADAMS, FIRST 10 GAMES:

30.9 MIN | 10.5 PTS (68.7 FG%) | 8.6 REB (3.2 OFF) | 2.8 AST | 1.4 STL | 0.9 BLK

STEVEN ADAMS, NEXT 8 GAMES:

29.6 MIN | 6.1 PTS (45.7 FG%) | 11.3 REB (5.4 OFF) | 2.1 AST | 0.4 STL | 0.3 BLK

The minutes have only dropped slightly and keep in mind he missed the end of the game against Houston which was when that calf tightness first appeared – otherwise we’d be talking pretty much the same opportunity. His field goal percentage has sunk, that’s part of it. Shooting at almost 70% was always unsustainable unless he was only gonna be a DeAndre Jordan-style above the rim dunker. His free throw accuracy has improved nicely in that time... but partly because he’s hardly getting to the line any more. Nah probably the most telling number between those two stretches of games is this...

STEVEN ADAMS, FIRST 10 GAMES:

71.7% Assisted Field Goals / 28.3% Unassisted Field Goals

STEVEN ADAMS, NEXT 8 GAMES:

33.3% Assisted Field Goals / 66.7% Unassisted Field Goals

One of the factors that has been emphasised by the team regarding their terrible three point differentials was that they need to shoot more triples. They need to make more but specifically they need to shoot more, to have that mentality, and it seems that as a result Steven Adams is hardly getting the ball in his hands in the paint now. He’s getting heaps of touches on the perimeter. One dribble, then a hand off to a guard in motion. That’s a move they lay down what feels like about thirty times a game. But there’s no pick and roll on the other end of it and with Zion’s immense ability to finish at the rim it’s often a matter of Adams getting out of the way.

That Washington game, Zion scored 32 points and each and every made field goal came from within three feet of the hoop. Have a geeze at this vid and notice where Adams is as Zion gets his jams. Usually he’s standing there on the other side of the restricted zone just kinda watching but engaging the oppo big fella. He stays close enough to haunt those second-chancers but is otherwise uninvolved. (Zion also gets a lot of buckets as the main man playing with the second unit, with Adams on the bench – there was a lot of that in this game too).

Let us now compare shot charts...

Except Williamson only had four rebounds in that Washington game. You see, there’s a bit of an inverse trend going on with those Adams numbers here. Note that Williamson didn’t play the tenth game of the season so his first 10 games are only 9 games. Also note that this doesn’t include the Sacramento game without Adams.

ZION WILLIAMSON FIRST 10 GAMES:

21.9 PTS | 55.7 FG% | 8.1 REB (3.7 OFF)

ZION WILLIAMSON NEXT 8 GAMES:

26.1 PTS | 61.8 FG% | 6.9 REB (2.0 OFF)

It’s almost like Stan The Man Van Gundy has looked at these two big fellas and decided to stop splitting the difference. Zion gets all the points, Adams gets all the rebounds. This paint ain’t big enough for the both of us!

The issue with the Adams-Williamson fit is that Zion plays like a centre on offence and a power forward on defence. He doesn’t have the hands or the instincts yet to defend adequately at the five position (in fact he was downright awful as a rookie, his centre matchups shot 57.1% against him that term - hence why he’s only defended at C for 26 out of 209 minutes this season). So the natural fit is to pair him with someone who is a five on defence but a four on offence. Adams is a pure centre though. Can’t sit him in the corner to hit open threes like a PJ Tucker, for example.

But a lot of that comes back to the dramas with the guards that we spoke of earlier and those dramas... well, they’re written in pencil at the moment because trades are imminent. Here’s a bit of context on that frontcourt duo from a few days back...

Will Guillory/The Athletic: “The Zion Williamson-Adams frontcourt has received a lot of the blame for New Orleans’ spacing issues, and it certainly has been difficult to operate at times with two huge bodies like that occupying the paint. But the Pelicans frontcourt can be effective when utilized in the right matchups. The bigger issue is that they can’t piece together any other frontcourt combos that can play extended minutes without getting torched. According to Cleaning The Glass, New Orleans has been 18.7 points per 100 possessions better whenever Adams is on the floor. Those are the kind of on/off numbers Anthony Davis posted when he was dominating here. As great as Adams has been, he certainly shouldn’t be in those kinds of conversations.”

BOX SCORES

at LOS ANGELES LAKERS (L 112-95):

33 MIN | 4 PTS (2/4 FG) | 7 REB (4 OFF) | 1 AST

at SACRAMENTO KINGS (W 128-123):

32 MIN | 12 PTS (3/8 FG, 6/8 FT) | 15 REB (8 OFF) | 4 AST | 2 TO

at UTAH JAZZ (L 118-102):

24 MIN | 6 PTS (3/6 FG) | 9 REB (5 OFF) | 1 AST | 1 STL | 1 TO

at UTAH JAZZ (L 129-118):

30 MIN | 8 PTS (4/9 FG) | 16 REB (6 OFF) | 3 AST | 1 STL | 1 BLK | 5 TO | 4 PF

at MINNESOTA TIMBERWOLVES (L 120-110):

23 MIN | 5 PTS (2/3 FG, 1/2 FT) | 3 REB (3 OFF) | 2 AST | 3 TO | 3 PF

vs WASHINGTON WIZARDS (W 124-106):

33 MIN | 6 PTS (3/8 FG, 0/2 FT) | 18 REB (6 OFF) | 3 AST | 1 BLK | 1 TO | 1 PF

vs MILWAUKEE BUCKS (W 131-126):

38 MIN | 4 PTS (2/5 FG) | 20 REB (10 OFF) | 2 AST | 1 TO | 3 PF

vs HOUSTON ROCKETS (L 126-112):

24 MIN | 4 PTS (2/3 FG) | 2 REB (1 OFF) | 1 AST | 1 STL | 3 TO | 2 PF

vs SACRAMENTO KINGS (L 118-109):

DNP – Left Calf Tightness

SLAM DUNKS

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