They vanquished the Portland Trail Blazers, but how good are the Pelicans, really?
Blazers fans continue to lick their wounds after being bounced from the playoffs by a dominant New Orleans team. But just how dominant are they?
The question remains: Just how good are the New Orleans Pelicans? Blazers fans (OK, I) must be forgiven for obsessing over this a little.
Especially considering how NOP so thoroughly dominated a decent Portland squad.
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Game 1 of the second round of the NBA Playoffs starts Saturday (tip-off set for 7:30 p.m. PDT on TNT) when the Pelicans head to Oakland to take on the defending champion Golden State Warriors, who may be without Stephen Curry.
I’ve made it clear that I’ll be cheering for the Pelicans, for a couple of reasons — not least of which is that I want to believe that New Orleans is on some sort of historic run and that there was nothing my Blazers could have done to stop the inevitable juggernaut.
But how likely is that to actually be the case?
As it turns out: Not very likely at all.
Second Round
ESPN writer Kevin Pelton has done a bit of a deep dive into the numbers, looking for some evidence that what the Pelicans did against the Blazers is an indication that they’ll springboard into the Western Conference finals.
History says they won’t.
Took a look at whether we should expect the Pelicans' strong play against Portland to carry over against Golden State: https://t.co/zxT9jUPip4
— Kevin Pelton (@kpelton) April 28, 2018
Some of the highlights:
- According to Pelton, “Relative to regular-season performance, the Pelicans’ improvement in the first round was among the largest leaps since those series became a best-of-seven format in 2003.”
- Since 2003, only 1 of 8 teams — the Grizzlies in 2013 — that “most outperformed expectations in the first round as a lower seed” upset a higher seed in the second round. “So,” Pelton concludes, “while there is some predictive value to how well a team performed in the previous series, for the most part surprising success does not carry over.”
- Even with Nikola Mirotic adding some new life to a Pelicans lineup that lost DeMarcus Cousins to injury, “New Orleans is going to have to maintain something like its first-round level of play to beat Golden State,” Pelton writes. “So the odds are that New Orleans’ run … will fall short of the conference finals.”
In other words, the Pelicans are good. They made Portland look bad. But they’re probably not as good as they made Portland look bad. (Got that?)
Next: Jusuf Nurkic seeking a long term extension with Blazers
And — here’s the key — neither team is better than Golden State.
So, despite our (my?) fervent desire to watch the Pelicans punk the Warriors the way they punked the Blazers, history and statistics point to a Warriors victory in Round 2.
But anything can happen, I guess. Players play the game — not history.