Week 1 Recap: Winning Cures Everything

Cool things I noticed from this week of games as the Pelicans start 2-0

Every week I will attempt to point out some things I found interesting about what the Pelicans did. Here are a couple things that stuck out to me this week.

CJ McCollum, Platonic Ideal Form

27 shots taken, 18 of those shots coming from beyond the three point arc. This nets CJ McCollum a three point attempt rate of .666 - a feat that was only matched by 20 qualifying players the past year. I suspect this ratio will come down, but the shot selection still represents a complete embracing of the team philosophy by McCollum. His previous high in this stat was .475 - and this took place Portland right before he was traded to New Orleans. For his career, CJ is at .367. If CJ can keep over half his shot attempts from three, he might see the most efficient year of his career.

“I think he loves that”, said Brandon Ingram with a smile when asked about CJ getting up more threes, “I don’t think CJ gone ever shy away from shooting the basketball.” To his credit, CJ claims there were a few he passed up during their outing with the Knicks.

“With Trey out, obviously we’re missing a guy who can shoot threes and make threes at a high volume,” says CJ, but he recognizes the opportunity is there. “I think I probably turned down two or three last night I probably could have taken.”

The amount of attention Zion and Ingram garner, CJ is going to get his fair share of looks. It’s on him to continue to take them at volume.

Let There Be Shooters

When Willie Green checked in Matt Ryan for the first time during the Grizzlies game, I have to admit I was surprised. Ryan had arrived in New Orleans 48 hours prior and had not been present at training camp with them. With Jordan Hawkins being drafted with an extremely similar skillset, I thought this was the Garrett Temple, Gary Clark, Tony Snell over Trey Murphy process all over again. To my great surprise, Willie did something I would never expect him to do - he subbed in Hawkins alongside Ryan just a few possessions later. This was surprising because Green typically is risk averse when it comes to playing multiple offensive oriented players with defensive limitations. Both Hawkins and Ryan were sharing the court with McCollum and Valanciunas. This substitution pattern embodied a departure from Green’s defense first, hard hat type mentality. The Pelicans were actually playing every single one of their best shooters together.

These lineups have been nothing short of a revelation, and the Pelicans likely do not win their games without them. In just 19 minutes spent on the court together, the Hawkins, Ryan, McCollum combo has outscored opponents by 27 points. There is just an incredible amount of room to operate in. Watch how Jonas is able to seal off Jaren Jackson, Jr. with no help defenders in sight.

“I like space,” says CJ of the lineup, “I’m always in favor of having space - being able to create, get downhill. The shooters space the floor. They run. (They are) really good basketball players in terms of movement, pace, tempo, point five mentality. It’s helpful, JV gets his touches.”

And it’s not just JV, it’s Herb and Dyson too.

“It’s fun,” agrees Herb, “a lot of guys can’t help off the driving lanes… it makes the game easier on us… More shooting on the perimeter opens up those driving lanes for guys like myself who like to attack downhill.”

He’s exactly right. The impact of shooters is multiplicative, not additive. On any given night there’s a chance someone gets hot and just buries an opponent. In the first game it was Matt Ryan with 3 made threes. It was Jordan Hawkins in the second.

The biggest thing is that Willie Green is once again proving that he can craft good defensive units out of anything. The sample is still tiny, but the shooter heavy units are crushing it on defense to the tune of a defensive rating of 78.4. Shooting variance can wing this number wildly, but the effort and rotations have been fundamentally sound. This decision to stack the shooters in stagger units while using Zion and Ingram to prop up the other units is a fantastic idea.

Armed with this knowledge - David Griffin and company should continue to invest in shooters so Zion and Ingram are not left to do the heavy lifting themselves. If the player is big enough in size and able to switch across positions, the positive impact they will have on offense will far outweigh any defensive concerns. Let’s not forget the 6’9” Trey Murphy is on the mend and will soon join the team.

Other Tidbits in Rapid Fire

• Winning Cures everything. Zion said it not me

• Don’t give Zion the middle of the floor, it’s game over

• Herb Jones is a menace on defense and fundamentally good basketball player

• The offense from the starting group still looks clunky and they need to figure it out

• The Pelicans had a tremendous game plan against the Knicks. Check out this short video on how they swarmed Randle and forced 8 turnovers