New Orleans Pelicans End Season With Tough Test Against Golden State

The New Orleans Pelicans have had a roller coaster year more notable for off court ‘soap opera’ antics than any type of on-court success. At the center of the controversy is superstar center Anthony Davis who earlier this year decided that the Pelicans were going nowhere and let it be known that he wanted a trade to a contending team. That led to a bizarre week when the Pelicans were shopping him, said they weren’t shopping him and then after the trade deadline passed with no deal said they weren’t going to play him. That got the NBA involved to put the kibosh on sitting a healthy player to preserve his offseason trade value. Ultimately, Davis got back in the lineup though saw reduced minutes and plenty of ‘nights off’.

Not long after the trade deadline the other shoe dropped when the Pelicans fired General Manager Dell Demps after nearly a decade on the job. New Orleans sports media pundits marveled at his ability to remain employed for so long without demonstrating much in the way of results. What finally got him pink slipped was his handling of the Anthony Davis fiasco. Despite letting the trade deadline pass with no deal–and presumably no real interest–it was later revealed that wasn’t the case. There were several teams interested, not the least of which being the Los Angeles Lakers who had a very high interest in putting something together. So why didn’t anything get done? Maybe because Demps couldn’t be bothered to return phone calls including several from Lakers honcho Magic Johnson. Returning phone calls to talk deals is essentially the job description of a NBA GM so he was quickly relieved of his duties.

That’s the Pelicans’ season in a nutshell which comes to a merciful end tonight on their home court at the Smoothie King Center. The contrast between a championship level NBA team and an also ran like the Pelicans will be all the more vivid with the Golden State Warriors in town to provide the opposition. New Orleans has long been eliminated from playoff consideration and now the only thing they have to play for is to not drop to #14 in the West. They’re currently #12 but just 1/2 half game up on Memphis and Dallas but the Grizz and Mavs have another game to play. That means that even a strong New Orleans effort might be for naught. The Pelicans quit playing defense some time ago and have dropped into a tie for the #27 PPG against along with Phoenix allowing 116.8 PPG. Their recent form on defense has been even worse allowing an average of 125 PPG over their last 10 contests.

Scheduling sure doesn’t help New Orleans in this matchup–they’re returning from a pair of games on the West Coast and actually coming off a win having beat the Kings at Sacramento last time out. That was only their third win both SU and ATS in their past 15 games. They started the month of March on a nice little run winning games SU/ATS at Phoenix, Denver and Utah but rather than build on that immediately began their 3-12 SU/ATS tailspin. The Pelicans have been at their worst after a SU win going 12-20 SU/13-18-1 ATS. Anthony Davis is listed as ‘probable’ for this game though that doesn’t mean he’ll see a lot of minutes or for that matter even show up.

The Warriors have had their ups and downs this year but have been slowly rounding into form as the season winds down. They enter this game having won five straight going 4-1 ATS and 8 of their last 10. Since the first of March they’re 13-5 SU/10-8 ATS. Andre Iguodala and Andrew Bogut will miss this game for the Warriors but Kevin Durant has been upgraded to probable. Not that it really matters given the superior Golden State skill and depth throughout the roster. Warriors have won both games against the Pelicans this season going 1-0-1 ATS and now that they’re finally starting to look like the defending NBA Champs they’ll want to keep the momentum going here against an opponent that is unlikely to provide much in the way of resistance. Golden State hasn’t been a great road favorite this year but with the NBA pointspread showing them as -8.5 favorites we’ll lay the price and hope to see their superior class on display.

BET GOLDEN STATE WARRIORS -8.5 OVER NEW ORLEANS PELICANS

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