Houston Rockets (44-29, sixth in the Western Conference) vs. New Orleans Pelicans (25-50, 11th in the Western Conference)<\/p>\n
New Orleans; Sunday, 7 p.m. EDT<\/p>\n
BOTTOM LINE: New Orleans enters the matchup against Houston after losing four straight games.<\/p>\n
The Pelicans are 7-8 against the rest of their division. New Orleans has a 14-22 record in games decided by at least 10 points.<\/p>\n
The Rockets are 8-6 against the rest of their division. Houston has a 21-11 record in games decided by at least 10 points.<\/p>\n
The 115.3 points per game the Pelicans average are 5.1 more points than the Rockets give up (110.2). The Rockets average 11.2 made 3-pointers per game this season, 2.9 fewer made shots on average than the 14.1 per game the Pelicans give up.<\/p>\n
The teams play for the fourth time this season. In the last matchup on March 14 the Rockets won 107-105 led by 32 points from Kevin Durant, while Dejounte Murray scored 35 points for the Pelicans.<\/p>\n
TOP PERFORMERS: Zion Williamson is averaging 21.4 points, 5.8 rebounds and 3.2 assists for the Pelicans. Saddiq Bey is averaging 17.8 points over the last 10 games.<\/p>\n
Alperen Sengun is averaging 20.4 points, 8.9 rebounds and 6.2 assists for the Rockets. Durant is averaging 25.5 points over the last 10 games.<\/p>\n
LAST 10 GAMES: Pelicans: 5-5, averaging 115.9 points, 43.7 rebounds, 26.5 assists, 9.2 steals and 6.2 blocks per game while shooting 48.1% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 113.5 points per game.<\/p>\n
Rockets: 5-5, averaging 111.2 points, 47.7 rebounds, 26.7 assists, 8.1 steals and 5.4 blocks per game while shooting 47.6% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 112.5 points.<\/p>\n
INJURIES: Pelicans: Trey Murphy III: day to day (ankle), Bryce McGowens: day to day (toe), Dejounte Murray: out (achilles).<\/p>\n
Rockets: Fred VanVleet: out for season (acl), Steven Adams: out for season (ankle).<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
The Associated Press created this story using technology provided by Data Skrive<\/a> and data from Sportradar<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Houston Rockets (44-29, sixth in the Western Conference) vs. New Orleans Pelicans (25-50, 11th in the Western Conference)…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38965,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3794],"tags":[86724,1297,7,292,194,4066,6,446,211,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-683929","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston-rockets","8":"tag-86724","9":"tag-article","10":"tag-basketball","11":"tag-houston","12":"tag-houston-rockets","13":"tag-houstonrockets","14":"tag-nba","15":"tag-nba-basketball","16":"tag-rockets","17":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=683929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683929\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=683929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=683929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=683929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}