The Pelicans Are Finally Getting Stops, But They Won't Make the Playoffs Unless They Start Scoring

Ever since the New Orleans Pelicans were smiled upon by the Lottery Gods and jumped three spots to select all-world talent Anthony Davis in the 2012 NBA draft, the franchise has been mired in mediocrity—beset by injuries, a coaching change, and win-now roster reshuffling that has combined to produce a single first-round playoff exit. Last season, the Pelicans finished 30-52 and missed the postseason altogether; this year, the team started 2-10 and appeared destined for additional misery.

Today, however, New Orleans is 15-24 and, thanks to the struggling bottom half of the Western Conference, actually within a game and a half of the final playoff spot. The key to the team's semi-resurgence? A much-improved defense that ranks in the league's top ten in efficiency, and has given the Pelicans an unexpected identity while covering for a surprisingly impotent offense.

Asked why and how New Orleans' defense is much better than in previous seasons, coach Alvin Gentry was quick to not take the credit.

"Well, I think it's the personnel," Gentry told VICE Sports, alluding to the off-season signings of defensive-minded wing players like Solomon Hill, E'Twaun Moore, and Langston Galloway. "I wish you could say it's just this great coaching that I do, but in reality, we've got real, solid defensive players. And we have simplified some of the things that we've done. And I think Coach [Darren] Erman has done a great job of making guys believe in what we do.

"It's a tremendous jump—where we were last year and where we are now."

Under former coach Monty Williams, the Pelicans consistently ranked in the league's bottom ten for defensive efficiency, finishing 27th, 28th, and 22nd in Williams' final three seasons at the helm. When New Orleans replaced Williams with Gentry prior to last season, the idea was to modernize the team's offense by speeding things up—the better to take advantage of Davis' prodigious gifts—while hoping that a defense that couldn't really get worse would almost have to improve.

That didn't happen. The Pelicans struggled amid injuries to several key players and never got anything going on either side of the floor. Davis was in and out of the lineup, and for the first time made only a moderate leap in skill level rather than a monster one. Key veterans like Jrue Holiday, Eric Gordon, Ryan Anderson, and Tyreke Evans missed time as well. New Orleans remained in the NBA's bottom five on defense (27th), and slipped into the bottom half of the league on offense (18th).

This season initially looked even more disastrous. With Holiday on an indefinite leave of absence to care for his wife, United States women's national soccer team star Lauren Holiday, who was diagnosed with a brain tumor while pregnant with the couple's first child and subsequently needed surgery, the Pelicans limped to an 0-8 start. (Lauren gave birth to a baby girl in September and had the benign tumor successfully removed in October.)

Over the first 12 games of the season, New Orleans was ranked 27th on offense, which wasn't all that surprising. What was surprising was the Pelicans managing to have the 14th-ranked defense during that time—and since Holiday has returned, they've gotten even better.

New Orleans ranks fifth in the NBA in defensive efficiency since Holiday came back, and is 13-11 with him on the court. Of course, he's not a one-man show. According to Gentry, the presence of those aforementioned wings—along with flexible bigs like Terrence Jones and Dante Cunningham—have allowed the Pelicans to shift to a smaller, quicker lineup on a near full-time basis, which the coach feels has improved the team's defense in specific situations.

"It allows us to do a lot of things that slow offenses down," Gentry said. "The NBA is becoming kind of a switching league, where you just switch and everything that happens, you're able to slow the offense down because they don't have the advantages that some of the pick-and-roll stuff that you would do in this league in past years [created]. It slows you down and makes you an isolation team and that's what we've tried to do."

Meanwhile, Davis has played much more center this season than in years past, and of late has played it almost exclusively. Basketball-Reference estimates he's spent a career-high 66 percent of his minutes at center this season, up from 54 percent a year ago. Davis played just over 41 percent of his minutes alongside either Omer Asik or Alexis Ajinca through December 23. He hasn't played a single minute with either of them since. During that time, the Pelicans have the NBA's third-best defensive efficiency—and given the shifting NBA landscape Gentry describes, that likely isn't a coincidence. Immobile, paint-filling defensive bigs are out; agile, quick-footed defenders who can challenge perimeter shots, show on screens, and cover large swaths of the floor are in.

Now the bad news. Despite a roster that seems built to play modern NBA offense—penetrators in Holiday and Tim Frazier; spot shooters in Moore, Cunningham, Galloway, and rookie Buddy Hield; and, you know, a superweapon in Davis—New Orleans has struggled to score, despite Gentry's reputation as an offensive coach.

Those struggles have Gentry feeling less than fully confident that his team's defense gives them a leg up in the five-team cluster fighting for the final Western Conference Playoffs spot.

"As much as I love the part that we've improved defensively, you've got to be able to put the ball in the hole," he said. "And that's where we've struggled. Our defense has allowed us an opportunity to win games and we have not come up with the big shots."

Gentry singled out recent losses to the Boston Celtics and the Atlanta Hawks as games his team should have won based on the level of defense it played, but fell short because of its offense. Specifically, he points to a tendency to get bogged down in the half-court. "When we move the basketball—when we're in the mid-20s from an assist standpoint—we usually have an opportunity to win the game," Gentry said. "And when we're not, we struggle. When we're in the 17-18 assist range, that's telling me that we're playing too much isolation basketball."

Stats support that assertion. New Orleans is only 2-12 in games where they have 21 assists or fewer, but 13-12 when they get to 22 or more. The Pelicans are just about an average team when shooting from deep (16th in three-point attempts per game and 18th in three-point percentage) but they've struggled badly near the basket. NBA.com has them as the league's third-worst team on shot attempts inside eight feet, and part of the reason is that too many of those shots are self-created, either off the drive or via the post-up. (They're shooting 39.5 percent on post-ups this season, ahead of only two teams, per Synergy Sports.)

There are ways that a poor finishing team can compensate for not being able to put the ball in the basket. Crashing the offensive glass is a good way to get second-chance points and take advantage of the fact that misses on shots close to the basket are easier for the offense to corral. It's unlikely the Pelicans, currently last in the league in offensive rebound rate, will suddenly start hitting the glass with reckless abandon. "I think, for us, we're not a great offensive rebounding team," Gentry said. "So, our whole thing is like, let's try to get back and set our defense where we're not giving up easy baskets in transition."

That strategy has worked pretty well. Opponents get out in transition against the Pelicans fairly often due to all that poor shooting they do, but they've rarely taken advantage. Opponents have scored on only 48.2 percent of their transition possessions, per Synergy, the fifth-lowest mark in the league.

Shifting to the aforementioned smaller lineup full-time has goosed New Orleans' offense a bit. The Pelicans had a 100.6 offensive efficiency through December 23 and are at 104.9 since then. But even that level of scoring would only be enough to approach league average over the course of the full season; given that efficiency levels typically rise as the season goes along, the same number likely would rank as slightly below-average come spring. After their start and with their current record, the Pelicans are lucky to even be in the playoff race. But they are in the race, and if they want to end up winning it, they'll have to figure out a way to take advantage of the talent on hand and put the ball in the basket.

Going forward, Gentry knows his team needs to find a better balance. "If you look at what we've done defensively, we've made a huge jump," he said. "We've gone from 28th to top ten now. And offensively, we've gone the other direction. I don't think you can have that much imbalance in what you're doing, where your defense is in the top ten and your offense is in the bottom five. And I don't think it can work the other way, either. We've got to, some kind of way, get our offensive efficiency to the point where it's consistent in what we're doing and we're playing that way every night."

Want to read more stories like this from VICE Sports? Subscribe to our daily newsletter.