Zion Williamson dazzled in a relatively modest amount of minutes for a second straight game Friday, but the team result also remained the same for New Orleans. Similar to their home game vs. the Spurs two days earlier, the Pelicans played from behind much of the night against the Nuggets and couldn’t quite dig out of a deficit that grew to 15 points in the third quarter.
Williamson was an efficient 7/9 from the field and packed 15 points into his 21 minutes, providing a series of athletic highlights, but he was limited to playing the opening few minutes of each quarter. Through the first two games of his NBA career, the No. 1 overall draft pick is 15/20 from the floor, or 75 percent. He has scored 37 points in 39 minutes.
IT WAS OVER WHEN…
Denver’s Torrey Craig scored a driving layup with 32 seconds left, giving the Nuggets a three-possession lead at 113-106. New Orleans had a chance to cut its deficit to three on the previous play, but Jrue Holiday couldn’t get his layup along the baseline to drop, putting the visitors in optimal position to close out the win.
PELICANS PLAYER OF THE GAME
Aside from Williamson, every New Orleans starter had a below average shooting game, but the bench unit was much more effective. Josh Hart contributed one of his most valuable outings of the season, notching a double-double at 15 points and 13 rebounds. The Villanova product and first-year Pelican knocked down a corner three-pointer that cut Denver’s lead to 109-106, but New Orleans did not score again after that.
BY THE NUMBERS
+16: Plus-minus for Williamson when he was on the floor. That means that during the 27:03 that the rookie was not in the game, the Nuggets held a 23-point advantage.
24: Denver offensive rebounds, the most New Orleans has ever allowed to an opponent in a game. “They’re the second-best offensive rebounding team in the league, and they showed us,” Williamson said. “I’m not going to sugarcoat anything. They just outrebounded us.”
18/30: New Orleans foul shooting. The Pelicans are No. 27 in the league in percentage from the foul line, a weakness that has been costly in some recent losses against top-tier opponents, including last weekend vs. the Clippers.
#FANFRIDAY
For Friday games during the regular season, a fan poll question will be asked on Twitter. Today’s query was based on Brandon Ingram, asking which of these three will he most likely achieve in 2019-20: NBA All-Star reserve, Most Improved Player winner or top-10 scorer in the league? It was a fairly even split between the first two honors, with MIP status edging out All-Star honors at 53 to 42 percent. Ingram has increased his scoring average by more than seven points per game from 2019-20, putting him at the forefront of the conversation as a player who’s made a major jump in performance.
