With 29 games to go in the regular season, the Pelicans sit 7th in the NBA in offense but 28th in defense. That discrepancy has led to a rollercoaster of a season when it comes to wins and losses.
However, the defense has fared better in the Pels’ most recent stretch of games. So can they improve enough to elevate into the Western Conference’s top 10 teams and qualify for the postseason?
Pelicans coach Stan Van Gundy discussed the team’s defensive struggles Thursday afternoon on WWL Radio and said the level of improvement they can achieve will hinge on the ability of each player to make good tendencies second-nature.
I don’t think it’s a lack of want-to. I’m not saying we don’t have lapses or we don’t have times when our intensity could be higher, but I think in general, it’s not a lack of want-to. What we have right now is a lack of habits.
When you’re playing as many games as we are in this schedule, you can’t rely on emotion and being up and all of that. What you’ve got to rely on is the habits you’ve built that allow you to go out there every single night and do things over and over. And our habits aren’t good enough.
And that takes time. Not only time in a season but time over seasons to build the habits that you need to have to be consistent every night, no matter what happens. And we don’t have those yet.
Now I think over the last few games, we’ve been much, much better. And hopefully we’ll continue to see that type of improvement over the rest of the year which will certainly add to our consistency.
But I don’t think it’s a problem of want-to. That’s not what I see in our guys. I think our guys want to get the job done. They’re an unselfish, hard-working group that very much wants to win and is willing to do whatever. But there’s just a lot of times where we break down in games because our habits aren’t good enough.
The Pelicans are back in action Friday night in the Smoothie King Center hosting the Denver Nuggets. You can hear Van Gundy’s full interview with Bobby Hebert and Mark Menard from Thursday’s “Sports Talk” by clicking the podcast link.