Cavaliers at Pelicans
The New Orleans Pelicans are coming off a 29-point home loss to the worst team in the Eastern Conference and now have to face the best in the East while struggling to keep their season from falling into irrelevancy. The Pelicans will try to earn a signature win and give themselves a spark when they host the Cleveland Cavaliers on Monday.
New Orleans planned on making a move up the standings during a six-game homestand but followed up a 118-98 win over the Orlando Magic opening the stand with a 143-114 loss to the NBA-worst Brooklyn Nets on Friday. "It’s an everything breakdown," Pelicans coach Alvin Gentry told reporters. "Everything sucked. The effort that we played with sucked. The coaching sucked, ball movement, everything about it was just horrendous. There’s no way to sugarcoat it. We have an opportunity, we’re trying to get ourselves and work ourselves into the playoffs and we have an opportunity to do something that puts us a little bit closer to our goal and instead we laid an egg." The Cavaliers missed out on their own opportunity on Saturday, when LeBron James was off the mark on a jumper at the end of regulation and Kevin Love couldn't get a tying 3-point attempt to fall at the buzzer in overtime in a 118-115 loss to the San Antonio Spurs. Cleveland dropped four of its last six games and is making a brief stop on the road before returning home for the next three.
TV: 8 p.m. ET, FSN Ohio (Cleveland), FSN New Orleans
ABOUT THE CAVALIERS (30-12): Cleveland was focused postgame on one play that went awry at the end of the contest on Saturday, a pass from LeBron James to Kyrie Irving in the corner that instead sailed out of bounds when Tristan Thompson missed the screen that was supposed to free Irving. "It's a crucial point in the game," James told reporters. "We've got to be able to execute, coming out of a timeout. We just sat down. We got our break. As a ballclub that's trying to win a championship, we can't have you go from a timeout to the court and forget what you're supposed to do. It's that simple." The Cavaliers are fine tuning as they wait for the playoffs in the spring, and ironing out mistakes like that is the focus of the next few months.
ABOUT THE PELICANS (17-27): New Orleans does not have the luxury of learning from its mistakes and fine tuning for the playoffs thanks to an 0-8 start that left the team in a deep hole in a competitive Western Conference. The Pelicans figure to spend the next few months fighting off four or five different teams for the No. 8 spot in the West. "We have to be, in order for us to try to be a playoff team, we can't have things like this happen," Gentry told reporters after Friday's loss. "... Like I said, hey, point the finger at the coaches, too. It’s not just the players. We’ve got to be better and we’ve got to be better in a day and I guarantee you we’ll get it done (over the weekend) at practice. We won’t have this kind of effort again."
BUZZER BEATERS
1. Pelicans star PF Anthony Davis (quad) sat out Saturday's practice and is day-to-day.
2. Love is 4-of-19 from 3-point range in his last three games.
3. Cleveland earned a 90-82 win over New Orleans at home on Jan. 2 behind 26 points from James.