Pelicans vs. Kings NBA In-Season Tournament quarterfinals preview
This will be the third meeting in nine games between New Orleans and Sacramento, but this time it is an elimination game with a trip to the In-Season Tournament quarterfinals in Las Vegas on the line. The Pelicans have righted the ship since a 4-6 SU and ATS start to the season, and much of that is due to health. The Kings had their own health issues with De’Aaron Fox, but he is back in the starting lineup and playing fantastic basketball. These two teams have visions of disrupting the Western Conference this season, so it’s fitting we get to see them in a tournament setting here in December.
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New Orleans Pelicans at Sacramento Kings (-4.5, 232) – 12/4 at 10 pm ET
Health is what will decide the fate for New Orleans this season, and over the last week its injury luck has turned around. CJ McCollum returned from his lung injury on Wednesday against Philadelphia, and Trey Murphy III made his season debut on Friday. For the first time this season the Pelicans are healthy, and it comes at the perfect time. Last season, when McCollum was on the floor with Brandon Ingram and Zion Williamson, the Pelicans outscored opponents by 19.5 points every 100 possessions. This season the returns are not as dominant with that trio – they have a +0.8 net rating in the possessions with those three on the floor – but the sample-size is miniscule. They can only get better with time, and they get to face a Kings team which had trouble with the short-handed version of the Pelicans back in New Orleans.
Sacramento lost and failed to cover both games in New Orleans two weeks ago. The Kings had trouble containing Williamson, who averaged 25.5 points, 4.0 rebounds and 5.5 assists on 68.8% shooting in the two-game series. That mismatch could be exploited once again by the Pelicans on Monday given how well Williamson has been playing. In his last eight games Williamson has averaged 25.9 points, 4.9 rebounds and 5.6 assists on 62.7% shooting from the floor. The Kings have no true match for him defensively, and they are already a below average defensive team which ranks 19th in non-garbage time defensive efficiency (115.6). That task obviously gets harder with New Orleans at full strength, which they were not in the previous two meetings.
This is not the perfect matchup for the Pelicans though. New Orleans is no great defensive team by any stretch. It ranks 14th in non-garbage time defensive efficiency. One of the areas in which the Pelicans struggle greatly is transition. Opponents have averaged 126.6 points per 100 plays in transition off of live rebounds – that is good for 25th in the NBA – and New Orleans ranks 24th in overall defensive efficiency in transition (130.8). Sacramento does not run as often as people believe – they rank 15th in transition frequency – but with Fox on the floor that changes. They rank in 74th percentile in transition frequency off of live rebounds in those possessions, and they average 128.6 points per 100 plays. It is certainly an area that the Kings can exploit when they meet on Monday night.
The two games in New Orleans should not be ignored, but it is worth pointing out that the Kings were in the midst of a six-game road trip at the time and one of the two meetings was the second leg of a back-to-back. The other was the fourth game in six nights for Sacramento while New Orleans had been at home for over a week. This line opened with the Kings as 4.5-point favorites, and that is where we currently stand but it would not be a surprise to see this line move toward the Pelicans. These two teams are near equals to one another, especially with New Orleans back to full strength. A line closer to 3.5 is fair, and this should close right about there on Monday night.
Lean: Pelicans (+4.5)
