Ugly basketball was played Tuesday night in the Big Easy, and the Warriors were on the losing end, 113-109, against the New Orleans Pelicans at Smoothie King Center.
The Pelicans now have 17 wins on the 2025-26 NBA season and clearly were the team more ready to play. The Warriors outscored the Pelicans 90-82 over the final three quarters but didn’t have their first lead until there were six-plus minutes left in the third quarter.
Turnovers and poor shooting doomed the Warriors. They shot a lowly 41.2 percent overall and 24.4 percent from three while also turning the ball over 21 times.
De’Anthony Melton led the Warriors with a season-high 28 points, including 13 in the fourth quarter. Moses Moody added 24 points, and Brandin Podziemski (16 points and 15 rebounds) and Gui Santos (15 points and 12 rebounds) each had double-doubles.
But the Warriors’ bench, outside of Podziemski’s 16 points, provided little and were outscored by the Pelicans’ reserves 45 to 26.
Here are three takeaways from a loss that dropped the Warriors to 30-28 on the season.
Draymond’s Return
The last game Green played was one to forget. Coming out of the NBA All-Star break, Green took seven shots and missed all seven. He didn’t make any of his five 3-point attempts and was a minus-28 in an 11-point loss against the Boston Celtics. Then he was a late scratch before Sunday’s win against the Denver Nuggets with lower back soreness.
Green’s biggest contribution early on was setting some strong screens for his teammates that led to points. He also had five rebounds in the first half and a blocked shot on Zion Williamson. But the Pelicans didn’t pay an ounce of attention to him when the Warriors were on offense, and DeAndre Jordan easily swatted away a layup attempt of his.
But Green was much better in the second half.
After being a minus-7 with five points, five rebounds and one assist in the first half, Green was a plus-15 with six points, two rebounds and five assists in the second half.
Know Your Personnel
It doesn’t take a deep dive on the Pelicans to know their strengths defensively. They cover the 3-point line well and give a clear canvas in the paint. Coming into Tuesday night, the Pelicans were holding their opponents to 35.6 percent from the 3-point line while allowing the sixth-most points in the paint per game.
Apparently, the Warriors forgot their scouting report. At least early on that’s how it felt.
The Warriors went 3 of 10 from 3-point range in the first quarter and 3 of 16 in the second. They went into halftime shooting 23.1 percent beyond the arc (6 of 26) and were being outscored in the paint 24 to 18. Execution wasn’t perfect, though the Warriors’ mindset shifted coming out of halftime.
In the third quarter, in which the Warriors had the lead for the first time all game, Golden State shot 11 threes and just made three. However, the offense began attacking and the Warriors were outscored by two points, 20 to 18, in the paint. The Warriors wound up making one more three than the Pelicans, 11 to 10, but accuracy escaped them and they were outscored 64 to 58 in the paint.
Early Hole Was Too Big
A four-quarter game was decided after the first 12 minutes. The Warriors were going on a mini two-game road trip against two of the worst teams in the Western Conference and put up a stinker to begin the game.
Going into the second quarter, the Warriors already were down 31-19. They shot 32 percent from the field (eight of 25) and 30 percent from downtown (3 of 10). The bigger problem was they had twice as many turnovers (six) as assists (three).
How they came out was the complete opposite of Sunday’s upset against the Nuggets. The Warriors had 25 assists in the first half against Denver and just 10 in the first half against the Pelicans, which were two fewer than their 12 turnovers. The Warriors were lucky to be down by only seven points at halftime.
They didn’t have enough luck on their side to come back and climb out of such a big hole created by themselves from such a slow start.
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