Christmas Day is here. Presents, family, friends, food, reunions at the local bar, the NBA – some combination of those elements usually makes up for a great holiday. The NBA schedule for Christmas Day has consistently been a source of great basketball, showcasing some of the best and brightest the league has to offer, allowing you to feast on a full day of sport. Of course, that presumption is largely based on prognostication. Not every team or player is going to live up to preseason expectations. This Christmas the New Orleans Pelicans and Miami Heat will lock up for an inter-conference matchup of squads on opposite ends of the standings.
The action on Christmas Day will feature 10 of the most prominent teams, featuring many of the league’s biggest stars (sorry New York, probably next year). The opening game of the holiday will feature the Pels and Heat. Before the season began, it was expected that both teams would be contenders – New Orleans squeezed into the last playoff spot in the West, and Miami missed the playoffs by a single game largely due to playing down the stretch without their best player, Chris Bosh, who missed significant time due to blood clots in his lung.
The preseason expectations for the Heat were high thanks to the news that Bosh would return. Dwyane Wade, Goran Dragic, and Hassan Whiteside are still on the roster, and the addition of lottery pick Justise Winslow, who unexpectedly fell to them at 10th in the draft, round out a promising team. So far, so good. Winslow started hot and has since trailed off, but entering the Christmas Day contest the Heat are the fourth seed in the East. At 16-11, they trail the top-seeded Cleveland Cavaliers, whom they beat sans LeBron James earlier in December, by 3.5 games.
New Orleans entered the season with hype of their own. The Pelicans have the league’s best young player in Anthony Davis and a new head coach, Alvin Gentry, who was hired while still working as associate head coach alongside Steve Kerr for the NBA champion Golden State Warriors. The Pels’ predicted ascension was based on the coaching upgrade, the continued growth of blooming star Davis, and the assumption that both the Portland Trail Blazers and Dallas Mavericks were set for a big drop off that would free up a few wins for the teams on the cusp of the playoff picture.
The Dallas slide hasn’t quite happened. Portland hasn’t been abominable. New Orleans is 9-19. A major factor in their slow start was a series of injuries that left Davis on the court with not much help. During that opening stretch of games the Pelicans started 1-11. For a short time, they were so depleted that they simultaneously had Nate Robinson and Ish Smith playing prominent minutes. With Ryan Anderson, Tyreke Evans, and Jrue Holliday finally healthy, the Pels have gone 8-8 since that brutal start. The thing about playing in the West – a 1-11 hole might be too deep, even for a Gentry-coached team that features Davis.
There are a lot of reasons why the Pelicans have had a rough start. The injuries, some questions about the play of Davis, being in the Western Conference, regression, and the list goes on. What we know about the Golden State offense – it is predicated on scoring, pace, and turning good defense into great offense quickly. Gentry was definitely brought in to help create that environment for New Orleans. While the entire thing is a work in progress, the Pelicans are 9-6 when scoring 100+ points this season. Eight of those 100-point games have come in their last 11 contests, and all nine of their wins this season came when they cracked the century mark – so it is safe to say that the Pelicans are starting to move the ball and get good looks. It’s starting to look up for New Orleans, but they need to continue scoring at a high rate.
That movement and scoring needs to be present for their game with the Heat today. Not only does the holiday season mean marquee matchups, it also means that we have reached the point in year where teams are starting to find their stride and make statements of purpose for the 2015-16 season. Take the Chicago Bulls, who started strong. They have been revealed as a dumpster fire with a descending trajectory right as we hit the holiday stretch. Conversely, the Pels started terribly and now are playing .500 basketball over the past month.
Miami is within striking distance of the top spot in the East, but the Christmas affair with the Pelicans is the start of a stretch against tough teams also looking to secure their playoff positioning. After playing New Orleans, they have important games against Orlando, Brooklyn, Memphis, Dallas, Washington, Indiana and New York. The resurgent Magic are also only 3.5 games out of first in the East. A loss to New Orleans and Orlando would push them down in the standings and the momentum of losing in those games could strip them of their top-four seed and land them in a fight to avoid a first round battle with the Cavaliers.
Similarly, New Orleans has been scoring and winning more lately, but a loss pushes them even further from the playoff picture ahead of games against Houston and Orlando, and two games each against the Clippers and Mavericks.
Christmas Day is set up to give us a great slate of games, meaning we all must have been quite good this year. New Orleans and Miami could both use the gift of a win with a stretch of important games ahead. The Pelicans need to continue to move the ball well, AD has to have his head in the game, and they must score 100 points if they want to win this pivotal game. If the Heat can take advantage of the Pels’ porous defense and get significant contributions from Dragic and Luol Deng, the game is theirs for the taking. Either way, getting a Whiteside and Davis matchup on Christmas should keep us all merry this Christmas.
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