Zion & the Pelicans are the HOTTEST TEAM in the NBA 🔥 | The Hoop Collective

Zion & the Pelicans are the HOTTEST TEAM in the NBA 🔥 | The Hoop Collective

Winers a four in a row they are 11 and four in their last 15 you can you can look back at different stages of it but I’m going to just say 15 because it’s a round number um that’s the second best record over the last 15 games in the

League uh behind the Celtics who you know had 11 game winning streak and they had had a couple losses this last week um they are number two in the league in defense in that stretch again you can look back to different stages they’ve been generally playing very good defense

Uh for the second half the season and that has been the story of of of this pretty significant turnaround um the other story is that they’re healthy I’m sure all of New Orleans is knocking on uh all the wood they can find because it’s been the defining characteristic of

This team um for a couple of years now but uh they are healthy and it’s showing in their results and P one of the things about this team that I think is important to talk about as we are here into getting into mid-march is one they

Are the second I think I they they are tied with Minnesota the Timberwolves lost on Sunday night in La um but they are tied with Minnesota now because they had a road win on Sunday themselves um they are tied with Minnesota for most Road winds in the league with 21 and um

That defense is traveling which I think is a big part of it and they have morphed into a from one of the weaker outside shooting teams in the League to a genuine threat from the perimeter and it has gotten them and granted and bontemps has talked about this on

Previous shows about how the western conference is constantly very volatile so we’re not going to make any Ironclad statements here but it’s gotten them into solidified fifth place they’re two games clear of uh of the of the Suns as we record this for six as all these team

Are fighting all over themselves and clawing each other trying to get to six the Pelicans have opened up a little bit of a breathing room there I’ll talk about their schedule in a second but Pelton um the Pelicans are kind of overlooked because you don’t trust them

But it’s time I think to start paying attention to them yeah I mean look you said second half of the Season second best defense you can go all the way back to their loss to the Lakers in the playin tournament that you know obviously a lot of people were watching

That night tuning into what had been you know the biggest game for the Pelicans in the Zion Williamson era and they completely laid an egg in that one but since that moment they are number two not only in defensive rating in the league and I didn’t realize this en t

Look up they’re number two in net rating period in the NBA over that span behind the Boston Celtics which is pretty shocking uh when you consider you know the teams that even have better records than him over this that’s ban like the Clippers I think the Nuggets may still

Have a better record Oklahoma City but in terms of a per possession basis uh New Orleans has outplayed them and you know look I think they’re probably was some element of a wakeup call to that playin tournament loss particularly for Zion Williamson and you know I was listening to the pels broadcast the

Other day and uh Joel Myers and Antonio Daniels mentioned that you know the the national media only likes to talk about Zion Williamson when he’s not playing well and it’s gotten really quiet while he’s going through a good stretch here and you know he we see him we

Acknowledge Him but the the thing that’s really changed as you mentioned as the hell and in particular you know what happened right around that same time as the playing tournament is our NBA draft night colleague on the who Collective live stream Trey Murphy I third got back

Into the lineup that’s right and he’s averaging 10 three-point attempts per 36 minutes this season which would put him in the top 10 in the league he’s not shooting outstanding uh the 10 three-point game the other night aside you know by his standards but just the threat that he poses is enormous and

He’s been a huge xfactor for this team if you go to basketball reference and sort by the game score on his uh game by game player page uh which is kind of a measure a summary of box score performance they are 10-0 in his 10 best

Games and one in six in his seven worst games so when Trey Murphy the third plays well the Pelicans are extraordinarily difficult to beat well it’s not really surprising when you look at his skill set too right I mean we’ve constantly talked about how that team needs defense and shooting around Zion

And he’s you know sort of a prototypical three and D Wing who also has the ability to maybe grow into more stuff the bottom line is they they are eighth in offense sixth in defense fourth in net rating they are right there in terms of across the board production with

Anybody in the league and they have been healthy for a while they have stabilized in the middle of the West they do with some of these you know nagging injuries that the Clippers have there is I think an outside chance they can maybe push up a little bit closer to them maybe they

Get to Fourth um in the west but as it sits here right now and we sort of touched on it on Thursday I think the Pelicans are sort of the team everyone’s sitting there saying well if we got the Pelicans that’d be a pretty good outcome despite

All of that because for all of the flaws of the teams behind them the the fact of the matter is despite the fact that he’s healthy into Joel and um Antonio’s point no one’s really talking about Zion Williamson he was healthy and wasn’t close to being an All-Star this year

Really and if you look at the other teams that we’re talking about with Dallas and Luca donic with Phoenix Kevin Durant and Devin Booker with the Lakers with LeBron and ad with the warriors with Steph you’re gonna be a lot more concerned about playing any of those

Teams in a seven game series against one of those guys if they’re healthy than you are against the pelicin in part because the one time we’ve seen him play in a game that had some sort of stakes on it in the NBA was that game in Vegas

And they got demolished isn’t even a proper term for it and they basically have disappeared ever since so it is going to be interesting to me over this final month of the Season anytime they get lined up against one of these other teams I’m going to be curious to see

What that matchup looks like because they are right in the middle of all this stuff in the west and probably are going to get a pretty Prime first round matchup against one of these teams and people will go into it I think generally despite their resume saying whoever the

Pelicans are playing is going to be favored to win well let me well they’re going to go through a good schedule test here in a little bit but before I get to that about Zion um his numbers and before I say this I’m not basing his season just

On his stats but just to be clear about Zion and his attention his numbers are are down pretty straight across the board he is averaging the fewest points he has in his career he’s shooting the lowest percentage of his career although he’s still shooting 57% he’s still a beast but um he’s a

Little bit less efficient that way he’s averaging the fewest rebounds of his career his steals are down um his arguably though the mo his minutes are down two that’s part of it um the most important stat though is he’s played 52 games and he is you know

I’m not assuming anything with him but his career high play to 61 which was his second season in 2021 um now what he has is the most assists of his career and that is because part of the changes that they’ve made that has helped them is that he

Played point guard a little bit early in his career uh it was one of Stan Van gundy’s big um strategies with him and they had some success he’s back playing uh quite a bit of time at point guard and so he’s not playing the same type of style of offense and uh they’re

Getting more production from the other Shooters you mentioned Pelon Trey Murphy having a good year uh herb Jones has I mean Fred vincon uh who’s the development I don’t know his exact title uh with the Pelicans but he’s their development Coach and he’s whatever his title is he’s shooting Guru that that’s

What he is and he’s got some some good success stories on his um his resume already I don’t have it chapter in verse but he’s well respected I mean Lonzo ball Brandon Ingram two guys who we didn’t think of as Shooters when they got there from the Lakers and you know

Unfortunately we haven’t seen it with Lonzo in a while but became a really good three-point shooter and Brandon Ingram has as well yeah and just the numbers because I looked them up or do you have them there no go ahead herb Jones First Years of his career and for

People who haven’t watched the pcin closely he’s one of the best defenders in the league herb Jes so as a defensive player of the year at Alabama coming in the league the question was can he ever develop any kind of shot his first years in the league shot a couple threes a

Game shot 33% this year he’s up to three and a half attempts a game more importantly he’s 90 out of 207 which is 43 and a half% from three and if that guy let’s say he goes down to 38 or 39% he doesn’t stay at 43% that’s a absolute gamechanging thing

If herb Jones is a 40ish per three-point shooter going forward with his defensive ability Pelton I think he’s one of the top three-point Shooters in the league percentage wise since like January 1 I think he’s um almost 50% and has been you know giving even better so you’ve got those two things

Zion is scoring less I think that’s maybe a good thing also Brandon Ingram is scoring less he’s taking um fewer shots uh he’s playing fewer minutes uh Distributing the ball I think he had double digit assists on Sunday they won in Atlanta Atlanta’s really beat up right now

Um uh obviously Trey young is out the rest of the season and um Jaylen Johnson and uh Ona kwangu are also out like Atlanta’s really just going game to game right now a couple like a couple teams in the East but nonetheless was a road

Win but um I think Ingram had over uh let me see how many assists he had on Sunday I think I think he had really good while you’re looking that up since January 1 herb Jones 29 games the Pelicans are 18 and 11 he’s shooting 53

And a half percent from three 59 for 110 and that’s well north of again significantly over three attempts a game which isn’t a ton but it’s enough and he’s making them and that’s a really really big deal yeah so anyway Brandon Ingram down three points a game down a

Couple of shots a game um but the Pelicans are performing well so they’re spreading around their offense uh more uh and Ingram like Zion is very much a distributor he’s he’s essentially a point forward the ball goes into his hands a lot and he creates a lot he’s

Averaging almost six assists a game he’s actually averaging more assists than um more assists than than Zion so you know when you watch their offense C.J McCollum is a guy who can be the the trigger man um Ingram uh Z on they move it around and they really defend so

They’ve stitched together a more Dynamic offense than they’ve had in recent years and they have you know Willie Green really since day one has been you know he he he came from Willie Green came from Golden State and and Phoenix golden state was definitely known for its defense and Phoenix had played really

Good defense uh when he came there um it was they weren’t quite their their Peak they were um there was the the year he came there was the year they won 60 over 60 games but he came there as a defensive minded coach he certainly was a defensive-minded player when he was in

The league and um he has really established them as a defensive team and when they’ve been healthy they’ve been a good defensive team um despite you know at times there’ to be challenges and um you know I I I haven’t watched them enough to give a fair assessment of how

Zion’s individual defense has been but the numbers show that they’re doing a really good job uh as a as a team defense now let me talk a little bit about their schedule they have a couple of really good tests this week they’ll test this winning streak Wednesday they play Cleveland Cleveland has been

Without three starters um got routed on their home court by the by the Nets on Sunday I don’t know if any of those guys are going to be back by then um so maybe not maybe not the best test of how how real they are as a team maybe well

Depends how Sam Merill is shooting it that’s True

Zion & the Pelicans are the HOTTEST TEAM in the NBA 🔥 | The Hoop Collective
Brian Windhorst is joined by ESPN’s Tim Bontemps and Kevin Pelton to talk about Zion Williamson and the New Orleans Pelicans being the hottest team in the NBA.
#ESPN #NBA

✔️Subscribe to ESPN+ http://espnplus.com/youtube
✔️ Get the ESPN App: http://www.espn.com/espn/apps/espn
✔️Subscribe to ESPN on YouTube: http://es.pn/SUBSCRIBEtoYOUTUBE
✔️ Subscribe to NBA on ESPN on YouTube: http://bit.ly/SUBSCRIBEtoNBAonESPN
✔️ Watch ESPN on YouTube TV: http://es.pn/YouTubeTV