The New Orleans Pelicans’ second straight loss came with a familiar problem Sunday night: the pieces that usually steady them simply didn’t hold up.
New Orleans fell 139-123 to the Los Angeles Clippers, dropping to 4-6 on the season after a rough 8 p.m. CT tipoff in Louisiana’s busy sports weekend. The Clippers entered at 2-7 and had lost seven in a row, which only made the final margin feel worse for the Pelicans.
Through 10 games, the shape of this team is easy to see. The ceiling is there. The consistency isn’t.
That showed up most clearly with the bench, which has been one of the league’s highest-scoring second units but was overwhelmed in this one. Los Angeles’ reserves outplayed them badly, and the numbers were ugly across the board.
Saddiq Bey went 3-of-12, Herb Jones finished minus-23, and Trendon Watford had his worst game in a Pelicans uniform. Before garbage time, four of the five bench players who saw the floor finished worse than minus-10.
New Orleans did manage a couple of runs to keep things from getting out of hand early, but the Clippers kept pulling away. Still, there were bright spots from Jeremiah Fears, Trey Murphy and Zion Williamson.
Fears turned in one of those outings that hint at what he can become when it all starts clicking. He finished with 25 points, six rebounds, five assists and two steals, and posted a minus-1.
Murphy delivered the kind of night New Orleans would love to bottle. He scored 26 points on 17 shots, added seven rebounds and three assists, and gave the Pelicans exactly the sort of production they can lean on. Fears and Murphy combined to hit 7-of-14 from deep, while the rest of the team went just 3-of-15.
Williamson was efficient in his own right, pouring in 25 points on nine shots and making every one of them.
The starting backcourt still left plenty to be desired. Dejounte Murray was plus-4 in his minutes, but he scored just six points on 1-of-6 shooting and added three rebounds and three assists.
Beyond the individual lines, the Pelicans never really got to play their game. They lost the rebounding battle by one, were beaten 34-23 in assists, and turned it over 16 times while forcing only 11 Clippers turnovers.
Los Angeles also outscored them in the paint. That’s a tough formula to overcome, especially when New Orleans is also getting outshot from three, even if that part has become part of the nightly equation.
And there’s no easing into the next one. The Pelicans now turn around to face the Golden State Warriors, who have won seven straight, in a 9 p.m. CT tip.
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