The New Orleans Pelicans’ four-game winning streak looked like a turn. Instead, the last four games have stripped away the illusion and left a much harsher picture behind.
After Monday’s 51-point loss to Golden State, head coach Jamahl Mosley said his team had been "punched in the mouth" and failed to respond. Two nights later, New Orleans took another bruising hit, losing 145-111 to a Brooklyn Nets team that came in with only two victories.
That defeat finished the worst three-game stretch in franchise history. The Pelicans were outscored by 101 points across those three games, a run that also included a 16-point loss to a Los Angeles Clippers team that had dropped seven straight.
Injuries have played a part in the slide, but they don’t explain everything. The bigger issue is that several of the problems now overwhelming New Orleans were already there when the wins were piling up.
The first 12 games tell the story in three separate four-game chunks. During the winning streak, the Pelicans really did improve.
They got more efficient on offense, defended better, and forced more turnovers. Their net rating jumped from minus-5.2 to plus-9.7.
But the schedule matters, too. Sacramento and Utah have been among the NBA’s weakest teams, and Memphis has gone 1-3 since losing to New Orleans.
The Pelicans’ win over Atlanta was a strong one, but it’s their only victory in three games against Eastern Conference opponents. The other two ended in losses to struggling Indiana and Brooklyn teams.
New Orleans earned those wins, including a road victory over an undefeated Memphis squad. Still, two of the four required overtime, and the stretch never offered much proof that the team’s deeper issues had been solved.
Defense was the clearest reason the Pelicans were able to stack wins. They were turning teams over, getting out in transition, and making opponents work for everything. Over the last four games, that edge has vanished.
New Orleans has given up 422 points in its last three games, including 83 in the first half against Brooklyn. Opponents have found open looks, extended possessions with offensive rebounds, and repeatedly punished a defense that struggles to recover once things start to unravel.
The numbers are ugly. After posting a 107.4 defensive rating during the winning streak, the Pelicans have allowed 137.0 points per 100 possessions during their four straight losses.
Some of this should look familiar. Defensive rebounding was already a problem during the wins.
New Orleans made up for it by forcing turnovers and creating extra possessions. Now those steals have dried up, with the Pelicans producing roughly half as many as they did during the winning streak, and the second-chance issues are still there.
After the Golden State loss, Mosley said his team let its offensive problems spill over to the other end. That’s a bad sign for a group that came into the season talking about defense as the base of its identity.
The stats can’t measure communication or effort in every assignment, but the results leave little room for debate: this is a dysfunctional unit. And when the offense isn’t scoring with any consistency, the defense has no margin left to keep New Orleans in games.
Even in the winning streak, the Pelicans were only taking 25.8 three-pointers per game. They shot 35% from deep, but the low volume meant they still leaned on paint scoring, free throws, and turnovers to generate offense.
That formula worked when the defense was holding up and the team was finishing efficiently. It has fallen apart now that the defense has slipped.
Over the four losses, New Orleans is taking 27.8 threes per game while opponents are getting 40.5, a gap of nearly 13 attempts a night. The Pelicans are actually shooting 36% from beyond the arc during the skid, a touch better than during the winning streak, but they’re not creating enough perimeter chances to keep pace.
The offensive rating has dropped from 117.1 during the four wins to 109.1 during the four losses. That’s almost the same as the 109.7 they posted while opening the season 0-4.
That kind of regression raises real questions about how sustainable this offense is, especially with Zion Williamson and Trey Murphy III unavailable.
New Orleans has scorers, but not enough reliable creators. The guard rotation remains unsettled, the shooting is limited across too many lineup combinations, and overlapping strengths and weaknesses have made it hard to establish any clear offensive identity. Those concerns were there before the injuries started piling up.
Twelve games is still a small sample, and four-game stretches can swing on opponent quality, shooting luck, and who’s available. The Pelicans deserve credit for the four wins they earned. But the improvement was never complete.
The absences of Williamson, Murphy, and Yves Missi have affected scoring, size, and defensive versatility. Even so, injuries don’t account for the size of these losses or for the defensive issues that were already showing up before the skid began.
After Wednesday’s loss to Brooklyn, Mosley took responsibility for the team’s defensive breakdowns.
"I’m not doing my job getting these guys to sit down and guard the way that we need to guard," he said.
That matters for a coach brought in to build a stronger defensive identity. Mosley has to clean up the execution and find better lineup combinations, while the front office is left with a roster that still has obvious issues in shooting, playmaking, and defensive consistency.
The Pelicans came into the season expecting to play like a playoff team. Through 12 games, they’ve shown they can look the part when enough breaks go their way. They just haven’t shown they can sustain it when the game turns against them.
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