The teams with the two worst records in the NBA will meet when the Washington Wizards visit the New Orleans Pelicans on Friday night.
The Wizards have just six wins this season, but three have come in the last seven games. The Pelicans have won just five games and are on an 11-game losing streak while also dropping 20 of their last 21 contests.
While Washington is the last-place team in the Eastern Conference, New Orleans brings up the rear in the entire league.
The Wizards are coming off their largest margin of victory this season in a 125-107 home win against the Chicago Bulls on Wednesday.
“It’s just been a focus over the last month or so,” Wizards guard Jordan Poole said. “We’ve been trending in the right direction. We’re just playing the right way, getting guys involved, using ball movement to get easy shots. We’re just continuing to learn and grow as a team.”
Poole has led the way by scoring 25 points or more in each of his last five games, including 30 in the victory against the Bulls. But he isn’t doing it alone. Six teammates also scored in double figures and the Wizards had 36 assists on 49 made field goals against Chicago.
“That’s how we want to play,” said head coach Brian Keefe, who added that the Wizards’ “defense and sharing the ball” have been the keys to the team’s improvement.
“Jordan creates a crowd,” Keefe said. “He generates two on the ball by his shot-making and his penetration and that gets a lot of our ball movement started.”
The Pelicans lost at Miami 119-108 on Wednesday, but during the current losing streak they have losses by five points, two points, three points in overtime and three points in regulation.
They also had losses by 15, 17 and 20 points in the run and have squandered fourth-quarter leads and dug significant first-quarter holes. That was the case Wednesday when the Heat took a 20-5 lead midway through the first quarter.
“The sense of urgency has to be there to start the game,” New Orleans head coach Willie Green said. “They got out to an early lead and it was an uphill battle the rest of the way.”
Forward Trey Murphy III has shown a sense of urgency of late, averaging 26.1 points during the last seven games to exceed his season average of 20.8 points. Murphy fell one point shy of his season-high when he scored 34 against the Heat, while matching his season-high with five 3-pointers made on 15 attempts.
The Pelicans continue to play without their top two scorers in Zion Williamson and Brandon Ingram, as well as top reserve Jose Alvarado. The trio has averaging more than 55 combined points per game.
“We’re undermanned right now,” Murphy said. “A lot of those times when you’re undermanned, you really have to fight when the margin of error is really small. We don’t have our guys right now. That’s hard for any team to deal with. People are stepping up, trying to make up for that and figure things out.”
–Field Level Media
