If you’re a fan of the New Orleans Pelicans, you probably said these three words at some point Monday.
“Here we go again.”
Perhaps you said it around 2 p.m. when the team announced that Zion Williamson was “questionable” for Monday night’s game against the Boston Celtics with a bone contusion on his left foot.
Or maybe it was three hours later when Pelicans head coach Willie Green downgraded Williamson from “questionable” to “out.”
If not then, you most surely said it as the Pelicans laid another fourth quarter egg on their way to a 122-90 loss to the Boston Celtics.
“They just took the fight to us,” Pelicans coach Willie Green said afterwards. “They were a tougher team, mentally tougher than we were. Physically tougher than we were. This is something that we have to get back to the drawing board and we have to come back and be a tougher team.”
If all this sounds familiar, it’s because it is. The Pelicans lost 12 games by 25 points or more last season.
Three games into this season, they’ve already lost their first one by that many. With an upcoming 3-game road trip to face the Denver Nuggets, the Los Angeles Clippers and the Oklahoma City Thunder, things don’t get any easier.
Making this latest loss even more disturbing is it came against the Celtics, a team that is not anywhere close to the team that won the NBA title two seasons ago.
The Celtics’ best player, Jayson Tatum, sat on the bench in street clothes just like the Pelicans’ best player did. Williamson is listed as questionable for Wednesday night's game in the Mile High City.
“In the NBA, you’re going to have games where the margin looks like that,” Williamson said after Tuesday’s practice. “But that was more self inflicted on us. We came in today and got some good work in. We’ve got a place we’re trying to go. So we can’t have self-inflicted wounds like that.”
The Pelicans were actually 3.5 point favorites against Boston until Williams was ruled out. At that point, the Celtics became 4-point favorites. The Celtics ended up winning by 32.
"Disappointed, Green said. "Disappointed in how we approached the game. Disappointed in just the lack of toughness on the floor more than anything. It's one thing to not win a game. It's a whole 'nother thing to kinda get punked on your home floor. I’m a part of that."
And just like that, all that goodwill the Pelicans built up with their fanbase in close losses to Memphis and San Antonio to start the season were out the door. They went from two moral victories -if you want to call the first two games that - to one demoralizing defeat in a matter of five days. Any optimism all of a sudden became a reality check.
Just three nights earlier in an overtime loss to the San Antonio Spurs, Pelicans’ forward Trey Murphy talked about how this year’s team feels different and has a bit more fight than teams of the past. But Monday night?
“We didn’t show that at all,” Murphy said. “… They fought harder than we did. Simple as that.”
It's only three games in an 82-game marathon, so it’s probably too soon to write the obituary on a team with a lot of new faces. But all three games had stretches where the Pelicans just disappeared and let the Grizzlies, Spurs and Celtics have their way.
“It’s a new group,” Green said. “We are learning each other trying to figure it out together. And as much as we want it to happen quickly, sometimes it takes a little time.”
Yeah, the winning may take time. But the effort should already be there. That falls on Green holding the players accountable. If Green can't, it'll be up to Joe Dumars to find someone who can.
Dumars vowed when he took over in April as the team’s executive vice president of basketball operations that the Pelicans would be a team that the fanbase could be proud of. Regardless of the wins and losses, the product on the floor would excite the fans.
"We are here to raise the bar,” Dumars said. “We’re not here to be happy with mediocrity.”
The season is still young, but Monday's performance was about as mediocre as it gets.