Can the New Orleans Pelicans and Zion Williamson OVERCOME the NBA’s Toughest Schedule?

Can the New Orleans Pelicans and Zion Williamson OVERCOME the NBA’s Toughest Schedule?

The NBA schedule is out and it’s not kind to the Pelicans. A tough start, brutal travel, but there are two stretches where the Pelicans can save their season. Let’s break it down in today’s episode of Locked On Pelicans. Let’s go. You are Locked On Pelicans, your daily New Orleans Pelicans podcast, part of the Locked Onet. your team every day. Welcome to another edition of Locked On Pelicans, the daily podcast covering your favorite team, the New Orleans Pelicans and NBA. Part of the Locked On podcast network, your team every day, available wherever you get your podcast and available on YouTube. I’m your host, Pelicans Insider, credential member of the media, JakeMadison, Nola Jake on Twitter. here with y’all on this Friday, final show of the week for locked on Pelgans and the NBA schedule is out. So, we’re going to break down some of the toughest stretches, why an important start is there. I’ve got the statistics on rest advantage and all of that for you. We’re going to look at where the Pelicans can save their season and a couple of other stats with the schedule as well. We’re going to break it down fully in today’s episode of Locked On Pelicans. Today’s episode is brought to you by Monarch Money. Take control over your finances with Monarch Money. Use code locked on MBA at monarchmoney.com for 50% off your first year. And of course, thank you for making Lockdown Pelicans your first listen today and every day. We’re here Monday through Friday, the number one Pelicans podcast covering everything you want to know about this Pelicans team. So, please subscribe wherever you get your podcast and join over 11,000 Pelicans fans on YouTube as well and become an everyday dare. That means you listen Monday through Friday to the Locked On Pelicans podcast. And don’t forget, you can watch us on the GF Coast Sports and Entertainment Network every weekday at 10:30 and a.m. and 5:30 p.m. And by the way, if you’re an everydayer, let me know in the comments down below. I see y’all there. So, let’s get into it. The NBA schedule released and they did the the league office did the Pelicans no favors whatsoever when it comes to this. The schedule is very tough. And look, you know, when you look at the schedule here, one of the stats I’m going to share with you is strength of schedule, but more or less every team kind of plays every team and plays a similar schedule. Almost every team in the West is going to have a similarish strength of schedule compared to teams in the East, right? The East is weaker than the West. The West is brutally tough. Thus, teams in the West playing at least three games against every other West team versus just two team, you know, two games against Eastern teams. That’s going to kind of do it here. And then which teams you play, you know, two or three time or three times versus four times is going to do it. For the Western Conference, they play every Western Conference opponent four times except Denver. Golden State, Oklahoma City, Sacramento, and Utah and Portland. They get two of those Denver games at home. Golden State is two at home. You only get OKC once at home, two on the road. Sacramento once at home, two on the road. Utah, which is less worrisome. One at home, two away. And then Portland is two home games, one away games. So that kind of factors into this with the first stat that I want to stand share and this all comes from positive residual which is the greatest site when it comes to strength of schedule. Um and schedule stuff. The Pelicans have the toughest strength of schedule in the league. Again, most are Western Conference teams at the start. Phoenix is second, Portland is third, right? Dallas is fourth, Golden State is five, Memphis is six, the Spurs are seven, and then you finally get to Brooklyn at 8 when you finally get an Eastern Conference team. So, don’t read too much into it, but look, it’s definitely a thing here. What you want to look at more are rest advantages versus rest disadvantages. And that’s where this hurts New Orleans a little bit, too. A rest advantages means you just have rest where your opponent doesn’t. This isn’t going to factor in things like the Pelicans have 3 days off, the opponent has two days off. As long as you have one day off, studies have shown you will be fine. You’ll be fine at that period of time and that having extra days doesn’t tend to make much of a difference. The Pelicans have a a true rest advantage in eight of their games this season. That is tied for second fewest in the league. There’s three teams that have seven. The Pelicans are in a group of with of six other or sorry, five other teams with eight. Rest disadvantages. The Pelgans have 11 games with a rest disadvantage. That’s on the higher side. One team has 14. A number of teams have 12. Then a number of teams have 11. The lowest is six and seven basically. So they’re not great there. Backto backs. The Pelicans are right in the middle. You either there’s teams with 13, 14, 15, or 16 back to backs. The Pelicans have 15 back to backs. Honestly, the difference between 15 and 13 be better to have 13, but it’s not 16. I don’t know. It’s about kind of the same thing. In terms of miles traveled, this one means less to me than other things. Pelicans are right in the middle. So, those are kind of the stats when it comes down to it here. But the Pelicans start is what worries me the most. Their first 10 games are hard here. Four of them are on the road. Uh, sorry. Four of them are at home, six are on the road, and you’re playing eight Western Conference teams and two Eastern Conference teams, with one of those Eastern Conference teams being Boston, which could go either way. You start off at Memphis, at home versus San Antonio, at home versus Boston, on the three-game road trip at Denver, at Clippers, at OKC, home versus Charlotte, then at Dallas, at San Antonio, and at Phoenix. When you look at those games here, I think it’s one, two, I might have messed up my counting here with how many are on the road. One, two, three, four, five. It’s sorry, it’s seven. Seven road games and three home games. I really can’t do math here. I was an English major. It’s rough, right? You know, you could easily get off to the only winnable game there that you pencil in as a win is Charlotte. You could see a one in9 start. You know, I’m not as worried about say a team like Phoenix in there as much. you know, Boston at home at least is kind of a good thing. But that’s a tough stretch to start the year. That is a very tough stretch to start the year with far more Western Conference teams than Eastern Conference teams, too. And that’s going to mean building early momentum is difficult here. That’s not great because the schedule being as hard as it is over the course of the year, it’s tough for the even out there stretches and we will look at those in the next segment here. But this is not one of those years where the Pelicans can get off to a one- nine start. You need to try and tread water and be 500 because it does lighten up a little bit. But overall, the Pelicans schedule is pretty balanced. You know, be getting off to a fast start is going to be important for changing narratives around this team, getting this team to believe in themselves a little bit too, and just changing the perception in the city of New Orleans where people feel very down on this team right now. But if you want to make the postseason, not digging yourself out of a hole early makes it a whole lot easier. Games in, you know, February, March, April, where things can be real weird in the NBA at that point in time. Not having to rely on must-win games at the end of the year, putting that kind of pressure on you when your bodies are tired, maybe injuries are are are a thing. That’s important. And this schedule though with a tough start to the season really doesn’t help New Orleans at all when it comes down to it. So they’re going to need to figure out how to really make the most of this early stretch and try and stay 500. Five and five over the first 10 games would be massively important I think and in my opinion a very big win in a sense for New Orleans to just not be in a hole early and almost have the season over before it begins. This is going to be a very big test for head coach Willie Green and this is the first 10 games might define his tenure here. You know, the past couple days we’ve been talking about it could be, you know, in mid December. You get off to a one and night start. You’re going to need to make some changes before you kind of go in the we’re bad and let’s sell off pieces and become sellers at the trade deadline and focus on development kind of thing. It’s probably too early to do that. So, you’re going to make a change at head coach. A lot can change for New Orleans after these first 10 games, especially given that it’s against eight Western Conference teams that, you know, the only win that you really put in there is Charlotte for sure. That’s not a great start to the year, but it does get better. The schedule does lighten up soon after that. So, if you can stay out of being in a hole here, the Pelicans could really kind of either soar or position themselves for the postseason pretty easily. Let’s look at this midseason part of the schedule that I does think that I do think breaks well for New Orleans. That’s coming up here next in today’s episode of Locked On Pelicans. Today’s episode of Locked On Pelicans is brought to you by Monarch Money. Most people can’t name all their financial accounts or even what they’re worth. So whether it’s 401ks, properties, investments, you know, when you don’t have the full picture, you can end up leaving money on the table. So, that’s where Monarch Money comes in. It’s an all-in-one personal finance tool that brings your entire financial life together in one clean, easy to use interface on your laptop or your phone. Monarch Money does all the heavy lifting for you. You can link your accounts in minutes. See clear data visuals. Get smart categorization of your spending and finally feel in control of your money without ever touching a spreadsheet. I love that it’s got all my accounts in one place. I need to see it all in one place cuz I’m not going to go to multiple things. then I’m just not going to manage my money properly. And if you have a partner, say you’re paying for a wedding that coincidentally is on a date of a Pelican’s home game, so it won’t see me there. Monarch Money makes it easy to manage your finances with a partner. You can both see budgets, goals, and spending activity in one place. So don’t let financial opportunity slip through the cracks. Use code locked on NBA at monarchmoney.com in your browser for half off your first year. That’s 50% off your first year at monarchmoney.com with code locked on NBA. And thank you for making Locked on Pelicans your first listen today and every day. We’re here Monday through Friday, the number one Pelicans podcast covering everything you want to know about this Pelicans team. So please subscribe wherever you get your podcast and join over 11,000 Pelicans fans on YouTube as well. And become an everyday or listen Monday through Friday to the Locked On Pelicans podcast. And don’t forget, you can watch us on the GF Coast Sports and Entertainment Network every single weekday, Monday through Friday, at 10:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. for your second listen. So, scrimmage with the Saints. How did the QBs do? Ross Jackson’s breaking it down over at the Locked On Saints podcast covering everything black and gold. Make Locked On Saints and Ross Jackson your second listen today. Part of the Locked On podcast network, your team every day. So, let’s get into where the Pelicans can even out their season a little bit. This is a stretch that can either maybe get you back to 500, which is about what it’s going to take to get to the playing tournament in the Western Conference, maybe a little bit above that, you know, or let you really position yourself for a tougher end to the season here. But there’s a couple of stretches that I do think really help New Orleans. And that first stretch is from November 12th to December 29th. This is 17 home games versus just five away games. That that makes it feel a little bit better. In December alone, there’s only three away games. You have a four-ame home stand, a three-game home stand in there. You know, in this stretch that we’re talking about as well, there’s another five uh there’s a five-game home stand, two threeame home stands, and a fourame home stand. That’s really encouraging. Look, just sleeping in your own bed, getting into a routine, just having some of that like roadw weariness leave your body is a very important thing. And you’re playing some tough teams in that stretch. So, at least you’re at home. You know, that fivegame home stand is Portland, the Lakers, Golden State, Oklahoma City, and Denver. Getting those teams at home. Look, that’s a brutal stretch at home, but at least it’s at home versus being on the road. You know, the next couple the next home stretch you get is Atlanta on 11:22 won’t be there in New Orleans at the game. Atlanta, Chicago, and Memphis. That’s a winnable three-game stretch right there, I think. You know, then you get a a baseball series against Minnesota after that. You’ve seen New Orleans play them well, you know, and then at home you’re against San Antonio, Houston, Indiana, and Dallas. Again, some of those can definitely be winnable, I think, before you kind of round out the month with two games against Phoenix at home and then New York on the 29th. Having those tough and winnable games there, New Orleans can make a run and that’s where they’re going to need to do it. I don’t think this team is going to come out of the gates in their first 10 games extremely strong, you know, looking super good and feeling like you can, you know, win all of those games. So, you’re going to need to really make it up later. And that’s a big stretch that New Orleans can do it in. I I would say their strength of schedule there is going to be above 500 in terms of opponent winning percentage, but at least they’re home games. And it kind of mitigates that to a certain degree. You know, you’re going to definitely just need that stretch to be as good as possible because again, I do think the beginning of the season is really rough. But this is where, you know, the Pelicans can either get back to 500 or surge a little bit. And if they don’t, you’re well positioned to know what you need to do in January in February, which is transition to becoming a seller here. You know, that’s also important to this what was it November 12th through December 29th stretch because things do lighten up a little bit in February. In my opinion here, February is a very winnable schedule for New Orleans. When you look at some of the teams they’re on the road against um and some of the teams they’re at home, they have a five-game home strand in February against Sacramento, Miami, Milwaukee, Philly, and Golden State. I don’t know if Philly’s going to be good. I don’t know if the Kings are going to be good. Miamiy’s meh, right? They’re mid. So is Milwaukee. So will Golden State. You know, your five home games there, you can go 4- one. And then when you look at some of the teams you play on the road in that month, you’re at Charlotte and at Utah twice. You know, you don’t want to kind of go into January and then like early February and be like, “We got a chance and then realize you don’t really or look at some of those kind of wins and losses even though some most of these are after the trade deadline and that could be fool’s gold for what you should have done before, right? You don’t want to just beat up on bad teams be like look we’re good when it turns out you’re not actually good.” But if the Pelicans kind of make it through that mid November to end of December slate in good shape, they can transition to being like, “All right, let’s make a trade. Let’s start to win some games because February is very winnable.” Now, there is a six-game road trip at the end of February going into the earlier part of March. But two of those games are at Utah, so that’s winnable. One’s at Phoenix at Sacramento. Those are four very winnable away games for New Orleans. Utah is going to be terrible in my opinion this year. You know, the two toughest games in that six game home stretch or away stretch are the Clippers and Lakers. The Lakers I don’t fully fully believe and they’re going to be tough, but I wouldn’t say I fully believe in in them, right? And the Clippers being one of the not one of the oldest team in the league, I think that can be winnable, too. So you start to look at that and go, okay, if New Orleans can do well there, they’re going to be positioned very well to try and make the postseason. So saying all this, you know, January becomes, we’re kind of working backwards here. January becomes a bit of a of a tough stretch for the Pelicans as well, right? There’s a lot of games on the road there. There’s six home games. It’s 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 away games, you know, but you’re playing a lot of Eastern Conference teams then. At Atlanta is going to be winnable. At Washington is going to be winnable. At Memphis, I think can be at Indiana. Yeah. At Philly. Yes. If you don’t believe in them, you know, you get Portland at home. You get Brooklyn at home. That those are important games. You’ve got Memphis as well. Detroit, Brooklyn, Denver, Lakers, Portland at home. Those are winnable games for the Pelicans. So that stretch of November, December, January leading up to the trade deadline, you should we should have an idea of where this team is when they if they need to make that decision, which would be, you know, the week before the trade deadline. Well, they should definitely be able to do that, I think. And I think that’s at least like a good thing to kind of realize here of just where you’re going to be and have clear delineations of when you need to pivot. and at least the schedule sets them up to kind of make that determination and decide what path they want to go down because they do need to pick a path. So, they’re set up in that sense that even if they’re not winning games, the schedule while being tough can lead to the right kind of outcome for New Orleans of I don’t think they’re going to be looking at themselves and have, you know, no clue what this team is. We should have a pretty clear idea based on how the schedule is laid out of they going to make the playoffs, should they push to make the playoffs or is this time to trade away some pieces and focus on youth and development and all of that because those are things that you are you’re going to need to decide. I don’t like the two timelines approach and don’t think that’s something that they should really be doing. Might just depend on the start that they get. Give me your record prediction through those first five games. What do you think is or sorry, first 10 games, what do you think the record’s going to be? Could be five and five, could be one and nine, could be better than that. Let me know what you think in the comments down below. So, coming up next, let’s look at the Oh, I didn’t update. All right, never mind. I will fix that in in editing here. I’m looking over at the side on the rundown of today’s show and I forgot to change that. Um, I’ll edit that in and you won’t even notice anything. Magic of the show right here. So coming up next, couple of other notes from the schedule that are important. National TV we knew wasn’t going to be good. It’s really not good. We’ll look at where what’s going on with the Marty GR trip and a couple of other notes from this schedule as well. That’s coming up here next in today’s episode of Locked on Pelicans. And of course, thank you for making Lockdown Pelicans your first listen today. and every day. We’re here Monday through Friday, the number one Pelicans podcast covering everything you want to know about this Pelicans team. So, please subscribe wherever you get your podcast and join over 11,000 Pelicans fans on YouTube as well. And become an everyday or listen Monday through Friday to the Locked On Pelicans podcast. And don’t forget, you can watch us on the GF Coast Sports and Entertainment Network as well every single weekday 10:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. here for your second listen. There’s no offseason in the NBA, especially with the schedule being released. For your second listen, find the Locked on NBA podcast. I’m on there every Friday along with John Carass of Lockdown Celtics, covering everything you want to know about the association, trade, rumors. We’re going to be breaking down the national schedule on there as well. It’s going to be a lot of fun. Find Lockdown NBA on YouTube or wherever you listen to your podcast, part of the Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every day. What I’m going to be releasing, I’m going to work on it over the weekend, is the fan survey for the New Orleans Falcons here. I have a number of questions I want to put in, particularly now that the schedule is out. I’m going to be curious your take on certain things. We’re going to be talking about this in the future. We’ll have it run for about a week or so. Keep an eye out. I’ll put the link in the comments down below. Probably next week when it’s done, we’ll talk about the talk about it on the show. Get you to answer the questions here and give your thoughts on everything. I’m looking forward to it. and then doing some shows based off of that and what you are thinking. And don’t forget, give me your trades. I want to grade some trades on the show. If you got one that is good, bad, we want my opinion on it, throw it in the comments down below. Let me know on Twitter, Nola Jake, and we will break it on down. So, couple of other notes here regarding the Pelicans schedule. Only two national TV games. Not great. We kind of knew this was coming. It’s going to be the first one is going to be the Pelgen’s home game against the San Antonio Spurs on December 8th. That is going to be on Peacock, which is now one of the partners when it comes to all of this. Then the next one is going to be the home game January 30th against Memphis. That is on ESPN. Every other game will be on the GF Coast Sports and Entertainment Network unless you make a run, which we’ll talk about in a second, to the NBA Cup. Um, but we know this, right? Just if you compare this to Zion’s rookie year of 31 national tele uh national TV games, Pelicans have really fallen off here, right? The season’s sparse coverage on national TV basically says the league doesn’t expect the Pelicans to be must see. They’re not confident in Zion Williamson’s health. They’re not expecting consistency. It’s just like like a deflated balloon in a sense here. It’s really disappointing. they’re going to need to win to really change the perception around this team right now. So, tying into lack of national TV games, we talked a lot about this in yesterday’s show. One thing to note is there’s only 80 games on the schedule right now. Depending on how the NBA Cup plays out, you can either get two games in those knockout stages or you just get two games added. When you look at kind of the calendar of everything, you will see there is no game between December 9th and December 16th or sorry 17th. That’s NBA Cup dates. Quarterfinals, sorry. Yeah, quarterfinals, semi-finals, then the finals there. Um, those are all in that stretch. If the Pelicans don’t get out of the group stages, two games get added. If you make it a little bit further, they adjust it so that every team will play 82 games, but you can end up getting it where like some teams only have like 40 home games versus 41 when it comes to this. Not ultimately that big of a deal, but if you’re wondering why there’s like a stretch of about a week and a half where there are no games scheduled, it’s because those are the like TBD dates for the NBA Cup. Hopefully, the Pelons play three games because that means they made the cup final if that’s the case during that stretch. Also this year there is no Marty GR road trip. It coincides with the All-Star break for the team this year. So that makes it a little bit easier. Fat Tuesday I think is on February 17th. The All-Star game is on Sunday the 15th and there’s a couple of days off with everything. The Pelicans won’t play again until the 20th. So that makes it a little bit easier I think for this team um when it comes down to it with all that. So, no traditional like Marty GR road trip or anything with that. You know, the big thing that kind of stands out to me with the schedule to kind of like just sum it up overall like I don’t know, it’s it’s about what you would expect for a Western Conference team. Don’t read too much into strength of schedule because simply most teams in the West are going to have a tougher strength of schedule whereas some teams won’t. Right? The Denver Nuggets are kind of the outlier. They have the easiest strength of schedule has to do really with, you know, which teams you’re playing at home that are three instead of four in the Western Conference. I haven’t looked at the Nuggets, but it’s kind of obvious they have some of the easier uh the harder teams as three games versus four. That rest advantage and disadvantage really plays a factor into it as well. and New Orleans did not get any real big benefits from that. Even if overall, I think their calendar, the schedule is kind of balanced in my opinion, but that’s kind of where things stand for this team right now. The schedule did them no favors really when it came down to it. But there are those stretches from November to de, you know, end of December when you have I lost the numbers that I had in front of me, but you have where was it? 17 home games, five away games. We’re going to be busy during that stretch here. And then I do think that road trip from February 26th to March 6, six games isn’t as bad as it could be. And February is winnable. The Pelicans feel they’re in compet, you know, in a competitive franchise if they’re around 500, you know, going into the new year. If you make it through January, come February, they can go on a run and position themselves really, really well to try and win a bunch of games here. does get a little bit tougher though towards the end of the season because you’re on the road a bunch. You know, in the six games in April, four of them are on the road here and you’ve got some tough games from late March through the end of the season. But it’s doable for New Orleans. They’re going to need to come out of the gates hot. We’ll see what they can do and we’ll break it down a little bit more on Monday’s episode of Lockdown Pelicans. We’ll get the fan survey out to y’all. So, we got a lot to cover here. No slowing down. We are still 5 days a week here on the Lockdown Pelicans podcast. part of the Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every day. As always, I’m your host, Jake Madison, Nola Jake on Twitter. This is the Lockdown Pelicans podcast, part of Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every day. I’ll be back with y’all next week. I appreciate y’all listening.

New Orleans Pelicans face brutal NBA schedule. Can they overcome a tough start and limited national exposure?

Jake Madison breaks down the Pelicans’ challenging 2023-24 season, highlighting a grueling opening stretch and just two national TV games. The analysis covers key home stands, potential turning points, and the impact of the new NBA Cup. Madison examines how coach Willie Green might navigate the difficulties, including rest disadvantages and numerous back-to-backs.

Tune in for expert insights on the Pelicans’ path through a demanding NBA calendar and strategies to capitalize on crucial mid-season opportunities.

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