A former franchise player is coming to the Smoothie King Center on Thanksgiving Eve as an opponent for the first time, giving Wednesday’s Pelicans-Lakers game (8:30 p.m. Central, ESPN) more weight and significance than a routine matchup on the 82-game schedule, right?
“It’s another NBA game,” New Orleans fifth-year head coach Alvin Gentry said to reporters after Tuesday’s practice. “We still have 64 games left after that one. (The media) can make it what you want to – it’s an NBA game we’re playing, against a really good team.”
What about the “revenge factor” of New Orleans having three players on its roster who are former Lakers, all part of the Pelicans’ massive haul for Anthony Davis in the offseason?
“It’s just another game,” said guard/forward Josh Hart, one of those Pelicans trade additions. “At the end of the day, we’re a team trying to get healthy and get better. This is another game, another opponent. This is the most important game to us because it’s our next game.”
“There is no bad blood. It’s all respect to that organization,” said Brandon Ingram of the Lakers, his NBA team for three previous seasons of his pro career. “That’s the organization that drafted (Hart, Ingram and Lonzo Ball), so they made our dream come true. I look at it as a regular game. We always worry about ourselves and what we can do.”
On a night when many sports fans will be focused on the NBA – nearly every team around the league is playing on Thanksgiving Eve – perhaps the most attention will be on the Crescent City, where Davis, Hart, Ingram and Ball will face the teams that traded them this summer. However, it is not certain that Hart and Ball will be on the floor, because Hart has been sidelined for the past seven games due to injury, while Ball missed Tuesday’s practice due to an illness.
In keeping with the theme of media questions Tuesday, Hart – who is listed as questionable to play with a left ankle sprain – was asked whether he was extra motivated to try to play Wednesday because the Lakers are on the schedule. He disagreed.
“Wanting to play in general helps the process (of recovery from injury),” Hart said. “I hurt (his ankle) in the first half of the Houston game (on Nov. 11) and kept playing (that night), not because (the opponent) was Houston, but because I’m competitive and want to play. The fact that I get to go out and play basketball helps the healing process.”
Meanwhile, a quote was relayed to Ingram by a Los Angeles writer in which Davis used a figure of speech, saying that Hart, Ingram and Ball probably “want to rip our heads off to prove a point.” Ingram disagreed with the sentiment.
“Who are we proving a point to?” Ingram asked the reporter. “I don’t think my emotions will be any different. I’ll try to be the same consistent person in what I’m doing.”
