The three-game road trip the New Orleans Pelicans are currently on looked quite daunting when it began.
The Pelicans were 0-7 against the Memphis Grizzlies, San Antonio Spurs and Oklahoma City Thunder this season.
But the trip has gotten off to a good start.
The Pelicans beat the Grizzlies on Friday and the Spurs on Sunday and have picked up a little momentum heading into Tuesday’s game against the Thunder.
A Pelicans team that often struggled closing out games all of a sudden has figured out how to do so. In their latest win, the Pelicans scored 13 unanswered points late in the fourth quarter to pull away from the Spurs for a 104-95 victory at Frost Bank Center.
In the game before that, the Pelicans got clutch baskets down the stretch from Saddiq Bey and outscored the Grizzlies 40-26 in the fourth quarter.
“What I’m most proud of is the defense down the stretch,” Pelicans interim coach James Borrego said after Sunday’s win over the Spurs. “Down the stretch, we’ve been able to find some rhythm here defensively. Same as Memphis in the last game. It was our defense that brought us home.”
Now the Pelicans take on an Oklahoma City team that thrives on defense. The Thunder has the NBA”s best record (37-10) and leads the league in defensive rating. The Thunder looked invincible after starting 24-1. Since then, the record is 13-9. OKC has lost three of its last five games, including back-to-back losses to the Indiana Pacers and Toronto Raptors in the last two games.
OKC has been a thorn in the Pelicans’ side, though. The Pels have lost 12 straight games to the Thunder. That includes the sweep in the first round of the playoffs in the 2023-24 season.
The last win against OKC was on Nov. 1, 2023.
To end that drought, they will need a similar all-around effort like the one in Sunday’s win over the Spurs.
Zion Williamson and Bey finished with identical stat lines: 24 points, 10 rebounds and four assists. Yves Missi came off the bench and also had a double-double (10 points, 14 rebounds). Missi grabbed 10 of his boards in the first half. Trey Murphy finished with 17 points, nine assists and six rebounds.
Herb Jones, in his second game since returning from an ankle injury, finished with nine points, three rebounds and two blocks. Since Borrego took over as interim coach 12 games into the season, the Pelicans are 7-6 when Jones plays and 3-20 when he doesn’t.
They are 2-0 with the new starting lineup of Williamson, Murphy, Jones, Bey and rookie Derik Queen.
Borrego's team had to scrap for this latest win. The Pelicans led by as many as 20 points in the third quarter before the Spurs rallied to tie the game 88-88 midway through the fourth. The Pels normally would have found a way to lose. This time, they did the opposite.
"By understanding that this this is a game of runs,” Williamson said. “We had a lot of runs earlier in the game. They are one of the best teams in the West for a reason. They made a run. We responded well.”
Two nights after beating the second-place team in the Western Conference, the Pelicans take on the team at the top of the West. They’ll depend on the same formula to try to beat last season's NBA champions as they used Sunday to beat the Spurs.
“We talked about winning the possession game, and we thought that’s where it would be won for us,” Borrego said about beating the Spurs. “We could turn them over and keep our turnovers down and obviously win the boards. We were crashing the boards (Sunday). Second-chance opportunities. Just great effort tonight on both ends.”