The Los Angeles Lakers have themselves another playoff date with the Denver Nuggets. The Lakers took down the New Orleans Pelicans, 110-106, on Tuesday night in the NBA Play-In Tournament, pulling away late after an injury to Zion Williamson. The Lakers are the No. 7 seed in the West's playoff bracket and will face the No. 2 Nuggets in the first round, while the Pelicans will face the Kings on Friday for a chance at the No. 8 seed.
The Lakers led by as many as 18 in the second half, but New Orleans came back in the fourth quarter behind Williamson, who had one of the best games of his NBA career before he exited with less than four minutes left to play. Williamson had 40 points, but was forced to the locker room with what Pelicans coach Willie Green called "left leg soreness." Here's the play where it happened:
The Lakers got a crucial 3-pointer down the stretch from D'Angelo Russell, who had 21 points. LeBron James had 23 points, nine rebounds and nine assists, while Anthony Davis had a strong fourth quarter to finish with 18 points and 15 rebounds.
Here are the biggest takeaways from the Laker victory.
The entire Zion experience, baked into a single game
This should have been Zion Williamson's coming out party. It was his first career postseason game. He was playing against not only two of the NBA's biggest stars in LeBron James and Anthony Davis, but a Lakers team that had humiliated his Pelicans time and time again this season. Sunday's season-finale blowout. The In-Season Tournament semifinals. Heck, the Lakers only exist in their current form because Davis forced his way from New Orleans to Los Angeles. This game was a chance for Williamson to stamp out pretty much every negative narrative surrounding the first five years of his career, to embarrass a rival and put the Pelicans on the map as a real winner. And he was breathtaking.
The stats don't do him justice, though 40 points, 11 rebounds and five assists are plenty impressive in a vacuum. He was frequently defended by either the greatest player of his generation (James) or a four-time All-Defense selection (Davis). He was, without a doubt, the best player on the floor. James and Davis could do nothing against, but he did plenty to them.
One second-quarter play stands out. James managed to get crossmatched against Jose Alvarado, and he predictably ran a post-up. He blew by the tiny defender and then easily faked Larry Nance into the air. Once he was safely out of the play, James went up for what he thought would be two easy points. But Williamson, who timed it perfectly, jumped back into the play and swatted the ball away dismissively, as if to say "don't try this nonsense in my building." Have you ever seen anyone block LeBron James like this?
This was the promise of Williamson, a supreme athlete quick enough and bouncy enough to embarrass LeBron but strong enough to score at will against Davis. It was arguably his best defensive game of the season. He was everywhere on that end of the floor, showcasing just how much he's grown even since that In-Season Tournament debacle against the Lakers. This is the player that we all thought would one day become the face of the league. The former No. 1 overall pick finally lived up to the billing.
And just like that, he was gone. With 3:13 remaining in the fourth quarter, Williamson went back to the locker room. He didn't return. The Pelicans are calling it left leg soreness. He'll get imaging done, a sentence that has been written about him far too many times.
Aside perhaps from conditioning issues that haven't really been a problem lately, Williamson can't control these injuries. It's not his fault this keeps happening. But it just. Keeps. Happening. Every time it looks like he's finally put it all together, some new injury sets him back. All we can hope for now is that Williamson is healthy enough to save the season for the Pelicans on Friday as he almost did tonight. Maybe this postseason can still be salvaged. That is yet another combination of words that has followed Williamson for far too long. Tonight should have been the end of it. Instead, we once again play the waiting game. It was everything we've come to expect from Williamson even if it's out of his control.
The Lakers aren't heading to Denver with momentum
Let's ignore Sunday's blowout over the Pelicans for a moment and take a look at the last 10 days of Laker basketball otherwise:
- A 10-point loss to the Timberwolves without LeBron James.
- A 14-point loss to the Warriors without Anthony Davis.
- A three-point win over a Grizzlies team missing 13 players, including every single player they played on opening night except for Jake LaRavia.
- A nearly-blown 18-point lead to the Pelicans on Tuesday that likely would have been a loss had Williamson been able to finish the game.
The Lakers had gone 21-8 between Feb. 1 and this stretch. That team is probably still in there. But it's not the outcomes of the past 10 days that are so concerning. It's the details.
James is 39 years old. The occasional missed game is inevitable. But a missed must-win game suggests that, physically, he's just not at 100% no matter how good he looked on Sunday. Speaking of health, Davis played one of his worst games of the season on Tuesday. He's been no match for Nikola Jokic even at full strength lately. How's he going to handle Denver's soon-to-be three-time MVP if the back spasms he suffered on Sunday persist?
It's impossible to fairly measure a team's morale. The vibes aren't great at the moment. The Grizzlies game was about as textbook an example of going through the motions as you'll find for a winning team. The final stretch against the Pelicans on Tuesday played out similarly. Darvin Ham called a timeout with 38 seconds remaining. Yes, a deflection forced the Lakers to redo their inbound, but it's worth noting that the Lakers didn't really run a play. They dribbled out the clock and settled for a James jumper against a double-team at the end of the clock.
The Lakers have played 18 clutch minutes against the Nuggets since the start of the 2023 Western Conference Finals. The Nuggets have won those minutes by 32 points. If the Lakers bring this sort of sloppy play into Denver they're going to get swept again.
New Orleans has an identity crisis
Let's take a look at the plus-minus finishes for the eight Pelicans that played at least 20 minutes:
|
Zion Williamson | +3 |
Brandon Ingram | -16 |
Herb Jones | +1 |
Jonas Valanciunas | -13 |
C.J. McCollum | -17 |
Larry Nance Jr. | +7 |
Jose Alvarado | +10 |
Trey Murphy | +8 |
What obviously stands out here are those last three numbers. The three reserves, Nance, Alvarado and Murphy, were essential to the Pelicans keeping this game close. They were the ones on the floor with Williamson and defensive ace Jones when New Orleans closed the gap in the fourth quarter. The more well-known C.J. McCollum didn't return to the game until Williamson got hurt. Ingram didn't play at all in the final 7:38 of the game, though in fairness, he was working on a minutes limit due to injury.
But there's a lesson here, one that has been pretty evident for as long as the Pelicans have had this basic roster construction. When New Orleans puts its conventional lineups featuring its highest-paid players on the floor, things go badly. The Williamson-Ingram-McCollum trio was outscored by 25 points in 733 minutes this season. Asking Zion to watch Ingram and McCollum dribble just doesn't really work.
But surround Williamson with spacing and athleticism? That's where he thrives. Williamson's three-best individual plus-minus combinations this season all came with reserves. He was +113 with Alvarado, +110 with Naji Marshall and +93 with Trey Murphy.
What should the Pelicans do with this information? It's hard to say. It would be easy to say something along the lines of "trade Ingram, start Murphy," but giving up a proven All-Star when Williamson himself is so injury-prone carries risks that plenty of front offices lack the stomach to take. But the bigger the sample gets, the clearer it becomes that the Pelicans are at their best when the team runs through Williamson and the supporting cast is focused primarily on, well, supporting him. In a perfect world, Williamson is healthy enough for the Pelicans to test this thesis in a real playoff run. Only time will tell if they get that chance. But Tuesday night, it was evident that the shooting and energy those reserves brought to the floor was bringing out the best in Williamson, and bringing out the best in him is what is going to bring out the best in this team.
