The New Orleans Pelicans are heading to the NBA playoffs after beating the Los Angeles Clippers 105-101 on Friday night and will now face the Phoenix Suns in a 1/8 Western Conference game.
Despite the fact that they were without the services of Paul George, who was not allowed to play in the game after entering the health and safety protocols of the league, the Clippers managed to make a series after falling behind in double digits behind Brandon Ingram and Pelicans. In the end, however, that was not enough to get the job done, as New Orleans eventually came out on top. With the victory, the Pelicans will face the next match against the Suns on Sunday night, with the start scheduled for 21:00 ET.
With the loss, the Clippers see the end of their season in a disappointing way, given the expectations they had after adding George and Cowie Leonard to their roster.
Here are three key findings from the game:
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1. Ingram delivers
About 90 seconds after the start of the game, Brandon Ingram rose to jump from mid-range to give the Pelicans the first points of the match. A few possessions later he did it again. And then again, and again and again. He scored 16 points in the first quarter alone, on the road to performance with 30 points, six rebounds and six assists, which was one of the best in his young career.
The second pick in 2016, Ingram never played in a playoff game and entered the playoffs determined to change that fact.
“Man, I feel great,” Ingram said. “Just to have a chance to be in the postseason this year. I’ve never had a winning record, I’ve never been in the postseason. Having a chance to show my talent on the biggest stage is beautiful.”
For most of the second half, it seemed that Ingram and Pelicans might not get there. They missed a 16-point lead and Ingram stayed cool with the rest of the team. But after being strangled by Nick Batum for stretching, Ingram finally figured things out in the fourth. He scored seven of his 30 points in the frame and had several huge baskets as the Pelicans struggled on their way back.
This was not the easiest season for Ingram, as injuries limited him to 55 games and he had to take on much of the offensive load as Zion Williamson did not play. But now he is healthy and when the season was online, he presented himself in a significant way.
“Brandon Ingram is the truth,” said Pelicans head coach Willie Green. “He just brought it. He had that look in his eyes from the moment we got on the plane to shoot around. It was locked. He was waiting for this moment, this type of moment. His training is out of the charts. This summer he works six or seven hours a day. He believes in his teammates. He is everything you want and more in a player and a person. “
2. The game in the tournament wins
When the NBA first decided to test the ballooning tournament in 2020, no one knew if it would be a short experiment or the beginning of a new post-season era. After this week, there is no need for guesswork. The game tournament is great and he’s here to stay.
He will continue to have his opponents because of scenarios like the one in which the Clippers lost Paul George in one game and were then excluded from the playoffs by a team that finished six games behind them in the standings. Honestly, this is not an unreasonable position, but it will not be enough to shake the league.
The gaming tournament improves the regular season by adding extra value to games that have been meaningless for so long, and the revenue that comes with additional national television games is not insignificant. Most important of all, however, is that real basketball provides excellent drama. These games, in which the winner takes everything, are extremely rare in the NBA and now we have a whole week of them. You can see how important it is to win these games for the players and there is nothing better than emotional basketball with high stakes.
Just listen to this speech by Willie Green:
Friday night’s game was a perfect example. If the NBA wants to give an argument for a game tournament, it just has to replay that game on a cycle. Or even just the second half, which was one of the best 24 minutes in basketball we’ve seen all season. Both teams made a double-digit comeback after the break, as the game reached the final seconds before the Pelicans withdrew.
3. The pelicans’ bench rises
If all you did was check the final stats of the match, you would probably skip the reserve points section, which shows that the Pelicans are 37-33 ahead of the Clippers in this category. On paper, this is such a small statistical difference that it does not seem remarkable. In practice, however, the Pelicans’ bench was the difference in the game, as it climbed down the field.
Larry Nance Jr., Trey Murphy III and Jose Alvarado have invented big games over and over again to block the Pelicans’ return in the fourth quarter and make sure they win. Both Nance and Murphy played almost the entire fourth quarter, combining 13 points, nine rebounds and three assists in the frame. Alvarado, meanwhile, had only two rebounds and assists in statistics, but his intense games were crucial to the turnaround.
After the Clippers’ approach with a small ball stunned the Pelicans in the third quarter, Willie Green responded, also retiring and playing Nance in the center down the field. This turned out to be a brilliant move. Nance enjoyed the glass, played strong defense, and invented a few timely buckets.
As for Murphy, he did exactly what the team had hoped for when he was selected in the first round last year: he turned off the lights. He came up with three huge threes in the fourth, including one to tie the game at 4:40 and another to bring the Pels to seven and essentially consolidate the game with the remaining 2:10.
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