The NBA Score: No case for the defence as New Orleans Pelicans fail to take leap forward

The clock is already ticking on the NBA’s great enigma, but what exactly the New Orleans Pelicans can hope to achieve remains in doubt.

Usually that would be no problem 14 games into a new season. The Pelicans, however, have a timescale that means they have one year to prove themselves a contender or risk it all falling apart.

Trading for temperamental but talented centre DeMarcus Cousins in February inevitably came with risks but the potential upside seemed worth the gamble.

In a small-ball era, no club has twin towers as formidable as Cousins and Anthony Davis, the league’s best power forward and a player long considered one of the top 10 in the NBA. There were growing pains in the final weeks of last season, when a promised push for the playoffs fizzled out before it even got going.

This season brought promises of burgeoning understanding between Cousins and Davis and the tantalising prospect of a team of such power they could give the West’s best something different to think about.

A fifth of the way through the season there are few signs that could happen anytime soon, meaning Davis will spend another year of what ought to be his prime scrabbling around for one of the last playoff spots. It was not what he expected.

“We are very competitive this year,” Davis says. “Practice has been super intense. Sometimes, the second unit – they get after us. They get after us for sure.

"I remember we were playing this game and we were tied at 90 with two and a half minutes. I think they scored 10 points with two and a half minutes and we didn’t score at all. It was 100-90. They get after us.

“We need competitiveness throughout the entire practice. They bring it every time. It’s just going to make us better and make them better.”

That competitiveness is not particularly present where it counts.

Wednesday night saw the Toronto Raptors put up 125 points in victory at the Smoothie King Centre (a name which gives Dicks Sporting Goods Park sound as atmospheric and iconic as Old Trafford or Lord’s) in a game that was quite possibly the Pelicans worst defensive display of the new season.

The Raptors, on game two of a back-to-back, seemed to have greater energy on both ends, with the Pelicans consistently failing at getting out to shooters beyond the three-point line, from where Toronto made 16 baskets at a rate of nearly 50 per cent.

It is not a new problem. Alvin Gentry’s club rank 18th in opponent three-point percentage, 22nd in opponent points allowed and 22nd in turnovers. They aren’t taking care of the ball on offense and they aren’t doing a good enough job on defence.

And that was supposed to be their calling card, according to summer acquisition Rajon Rondo.

Davis told SiriusXM Radio of NBA Champion Rondo: “He kind of set these goals for me and DeMarcus already. He wants to both of us to be on the first defensive team. He said one of us is going to win defensive player of the year. Those are his goals for us.

“DeMarcus and I were watching film today and he said ‘A.D., I think you have a chance to win defensive player of the year this year.’ So, that’s the thing. Offensively, we’re not really worried about what’s going to happen. That’s going to take care of itself.

“Our biggest thing right now is defence. That’s what we’re going to try to focus on. I guard him. He guards me. Any time I’m off the floor, I’m still talking defensively. We’re trying to have DeMarcus do the same thing. He’s out there talking.

“When us two are in the back, especially [being] the anchors of the defence, and talking to everybody on the floor, it just makes our defence so much better. That’s what we’re trying to get better at.”

The defence had performed at a league-best rating when Cousins and Davis were on the court together last season and whilst the Pelicans still look a formidable opponent when the big two are on the court they simply cannot afford to be so lax on one end of the court when their offence is still struggling to incorporate two dominant big men.

Cousins and Davis aside the Pelicans have nothing. Their supposed third star Jrue Holiday was handed a five-year contract and shunted out to shooting guard to incorporate a fading Rondo. Their small forward position is a vortex of

Should Cousins bolt at the end of his contract this season a year-and-a-half-long experiment will have been in vain and another rebuild will await a team that has the one key ingredient required for sustained success in the NBA: superstar talent. That’s one matter, but will a by-then 25-year-old Davis still have faith in an organisation that has won zero post-season games since drafting him in 2012.

They may have him tied down to a $127million contract that doesn’t expire until 2021 but how many more years of his prime Davis can stand to see frittered away remains to be seen. The Pelicans need to start winning: fast.