Pelicans Pulverize Sixers in 135-98 Rout

By Sean Kennedy

In Jrue Holiday’s first game facing his old Sixers team…(Anthony Davis blocks my lede). On the tail-end of a back-to-back after a sluggish loss to the Hawks…(Davis blocks me again). In Ryan Anderson’s first game back in action this season…(A looming figure swoops down and blocks my attempt once more).

Fine, Anthony Davis was a monster on the defensive end Saturday night, finishing with 13 points, 9 rebounds, and 8 blocks in just 3 quarters of action, including a franchise-record-tying 5 blocks in the first quarter. The man has such long arms, he can cover the entire painted area by himself. Playing a back-to-back and clearly with some tired legs, the Sixers had no chance at finishing in the lane with Davis on patrol.

Another big storyline was Jrue Holiday’s first game against the Sixers and Holiday had perhaps his best game of the season. Jrue shot efficiently from the floor on his way to 14 points, and dropped 12 dimes against just 1 turnover and looked like a seasoned veteran against the defensive efforts of Tony Wroten and Darius Morris. New Orleans hopes this performance springboards Holiday’s season.

The other Sixers assassin Saturday night was sharpshooter Ryan Anderson who, playing his first game of the season coming off a toe injury, torched Philadelphia for a game-high 26 points on 6-10 three-point shooting. This performance was entirely expected as one of the best volume outside shooters in the league was bound to have a great game against the putrid perimeter rotations of the Sixers.

For the Sixers, there wasn’t too much positive feedback from this contest, as they were behind by 12 points after one quarter, and it only got worse from there. Wroten led the team with 19 points, and did make 2 of his 5 three points attempts which was nice, but he also committed more turnovers than assists (3 to 2) and wasn’t great on defensive end. The team couldn’t get anything going in the paint with Davis on patrol and the team has predictably regressed from their hot three-point shooting at the beginning of the season, going just 6-19 in this one.

Notable Observations:

• Jrue must feel like he’s in heaven being able to throw alley-oops to Anthony Davis through traffic in the lane. We always wondered how Holiday’s overall floor game would be helped by having a big man with that sort of athleticism to rack up some easy assists (as well as Hawes has played the majority of this season, his ability to leap over a medium-sized high school textbook has often been called into question). Based on the sample size of this contest, it looks like those two will be working well together for years to come.
• There were more than a few Evan Turner questioning looks to the officials amidst his 2-11 performance from the floor. No Evan, you weren’t fouled, the pain you felt was shame at having Anthony Davis block out the sun and swat your drive back into the Earth’s mantle.
• Darius Morris led the team with 20 points but I just want to point out that most of that production came in garbage time (the entire fourth quarter was garbage time). He had 5 turnovers against just 2 assists and nothing from his performance made my question my opinion of his not being a rotational player.

Tanking Implications: 

Coming into the season, we expected more of these sorts of games than we’ve been subjected to thus far, which I guess we should be thankful for since there’s not much goodwill to be drawn from getting blown out by 37 points. I suppose Tony Wroten played okay, but it should say something that another point guard had a big performance against him. This was a textbook tanking contest, but not much hope for the future to be drawn from this contest. Get well soon MCW. 3/5 tanks.