The New Orleans Pelicans suffered their fourth loss of the season Wednesday night as Nickeill Alexander-Walkers potential game-winning shot attempt rimmed out giving the Pelicans a 111-110 loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder.
Pelicans coach Stan Van Gundy was adamant that the loss was solely to blame on the Pelicans performance on the defensive end of the floor.
“We guarded for about the first five six minutes of the third quarter and that was about it for the entire evening,” he said, “We didn’t put anything into it .Our defense has gradually been slipping the last three games. We’re either going to dig in and have a chance to be a good team or we’re going to play the kind of defense we’ve played the last three games and be mediocre or worse.”
Van Gundy pointed in particular to the Pelicans’ transition defense Wednesday night. The Thunder scored 27 fast break points Wednesday despite only averaging roughly 7.5 coming into the game.
“We don’t need to talk about anything else,” VanGunday said. “That becomes the problem. It’s all about the last play, the missed shots, the offense and that (expletive) has been going on too long with this group. Dig in and play the game defensively. We scored 110 points. If you can’t win scoring 110 points there’s something wrong.”
Zion Williamson scored a game -high 29 points for New Orleans while Steven Adams logged his first career triple-double with 10 point, 10 assists and 11 rebounds.
Brandon Ingram also Added 24 points and 11 rebounds Wednesday night.
Adams said the key to better transition defense is effort and communication.
“It’s literally just get back on the shot,” he said. “There’s nothing complicated about it…”
Williamson echoed Adams and stressed the need for improvement on the defensive end.
”All the great teams are great defensive teams,” he said. “And when we plan for a certain thing and we don’t execute on it then we can be great. We just have to have better execution.”
