Late in the first quarter Saturday night, the New Orleans Pelicans stood around and watched the Phoenix Suns snatch four offensive rebounds on one possession.
It was that type of game – well, actually two games – for the Pelicans, who lost to the Suns on back-to-back nights.
The offensive rebounds told the story, especially in the first half.
Phoenix grabbed 12 offensive rebounds in the first half Friday and 18 in the first half Saturday.
“Just get the damn ball,” said Trey Murphy. “That’s it. There is no real practice for it. Just get the ball. Simple as that.”
The Pelicans got better in the second half both nights. Phoenix had six offensive rebounds in the second half Friday and four in the second half Saturday. But it’s still a disturbing trend to get beat on the boards so often to start the game.
“In that first half, they killed us,” said forward Zion Williamson. “When you look at the end of the game, those are the small nuances that affect the game. Last game (Friday) it was free throws (25 of 42). This game it was offensive boards. It’s hard to win in the NBA. If we want to win, we have to be better at those things. We have to do the small things as well.”
Williamson knows the Pelicans can be better at it.
“It was definitely an effort thing,” Williamson said. “We didn’t put a lot of effort there. They outhustled us.”
The Suns’ offensive rebounding led to 30 second chance points Saturday.
The Pelicans can’t waste any time resolving the issue. They host the New York Knicks Monday night at Smoothie King Center. The Knicks are the fourth best offensive rebounding team in the league, averaging 14.1 per game. They are led in that category by Mitchell Robinson. The Chalmette High alum averages a league-best 4.7 offensive rebounds per game. He had eight in a victory over the Cleveland Cavaliers on Christmas day.
“We better (fix it) or it’s going to be even worse with him coming to town,” Murphy said. “Especially with him playing back in his hometown. He’ll probably be even more energetic and ready to rebound the ball. So for sure. We definitely need to fix it.”
Pelicans’ interim coach James Borrego says the team will have to take more of a rebound by committee approach to improve in that area.
“Defensive rebounding has been an issue for us since (Jonas) Valanciunas left,” Borrego said. “Bottom line. We lost that presence, that size, that physicality on the board. Little by little, we’ve been trying to chip away the defensive rebounding. This isn’t a new phenomenon. The boards have been an issue for us all year. It was an issue for us last year. There’s got to be physical presence to this thing. It takes five guys. We don’t have one guy that’s going to go gobble up every rebound. We don’t have that guy. It’s going to have to be a collective effort.”
The Pelicans (8-25) are on a 3-game losing streak. Prior to this recent slide, they had won five games in a row and seemed to be turning things around.
“We’re not happy at all,” Murphy said. “Obviously we didn’t feel like the winning was a fluke. And we don’t feel like this losing streak is us either. So we have to get back on track.”
It starts on the glass.