The New Orleans Pelicans had an opportunity to end three losing streaks Sunday night in the Smoothie King Center.<\/p>\n
But their 112-108 loss to the Orlando Magic extended their losing streak to eight games in their ninth consecutive loss to the Magic and their ninth straight to Orlando in New Orleans.<\/p>\n
The Pelicans (25-54) led by as many as 15 points in the third quarter, but the Magic (42-36) completed their comeback by outscoring New Orleans 31-20 in the fourth quarter.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s tough when you\u2019re not scoring and they go down and get buckets,\u201d Pelicans interim head coach James Borrego said of the fourth quarter. There\u2019s nothing tricky going on out there. It\u2019s just, can go get buckets in the fourth quarter.\u201d<\/p>\n
Desmond Bane scored 27 points, Paolo Banchero had 23 points and 16 rebounds, Wendell Carter Jr. scored 13 and Franz Wagner, Jalen Suggs and Jevon Carter scored 11 each for Orlando.<\/p>\n
Saddiq Bey scored 32 points, Jeremiah Fears added 19, Yves Missi had a season-high 18 points and 13 rebounds and Zion Williamson scored 17 to lead the Pelicans, who will play their final home game of the season against the Utah Jazz at 7 p.m. Tuesday in the Smoothie King Center.<\/p>\n
New Orleans played without leading scorer Trey Murphy (ankle), starting point guard Dejounte Murray (hand) and reserve center Karlo Matkovic (back) as well as reserve guard Bryce McGowens (toe), who missed his 13th consecutive game.<\/p>\n
Borrego took advantage of the absences to give added playing time to the team\u2019s youngest players. Rookie Micah Peavy (three points and five rebounds in 28 minutes) started the second half in place of Herb Jones, who didn\u2019t play after halftime.<\/p>\n
Missi\u2019s 40 minutes were a season-high and tied his career-high, Fears\u2019 37 minutes tied the rookie\u2019s season-high and Jordan Hawkins\u2019 26 were a season-high. Two-way players Hunter Dickinson (four minutes) and Trey Alexander (11 minutes) received rare playing time as Dickinson played for the first time since the season opener and Alexander played in his sixth game of the season and his first in 39 games.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese are big moments,\u201d Borrego said. \u201cYou can\u2019t replicate this. There\u2019s no pickup game, no workout for this. They have to go through it. These are real NBA minutes against teams that are fighting for the playoffs or seeding and are trying to play at their peak.\u201d<\/p>\n
New Orleans will conclude the season with games at Boston on Friday and at Minnesota next Sunday.<\/p>\n
Fears scored the first five points of the third quarter, giving the Pelicans a 65-52 lead. The Magic scored the next five points, but Bey\u2019s 3-point lead completed a 7-0 run that gave New Orleans a 15-point lead.<\/p>\n
Bane\u2019s three-point play started a 13-4 run that pulled Orlando within 76-70. The Pelicans rebuilt the lead to 13 before a 7-0 run helped the Magic trim the lead to 88-81 at the end of the third quarter.<\/p>\n
Bane made a 3-pointer to start the fourth-quarter scoring, but Bey had five points to help New Orleans take a 96-88 lead. Banchero\u2019s three-point play and Suggs\u2019 3-pointer completed a 10-0 run that gave Orlando its first lead since the second quarter, 98-96.<\/p>\n
The lead changed hands twice and the score was tied once before Wendell Carter\u2019s put-back gave the Magic the lead for good, 103-101. Orlando extended the lead to six points before Fears ended a nearly 4\u00bd-minute field-goal drought for New Orleans to trim the lead to 108-104 with 34 seconds left. Bane made four free throws in the final 27 seconds.<\/p>\n
The score was tied four times and the lead changed hands four times during the first quarter. The Magic led by as many as seven points before the Pelicans led by eight on two occasions, but former Pelican Jamal Cain and Wendell Carter scored four points each during a closing 10-1 run that gave Orlando a 29-28 lead at the end of the period.<\/p>\n
The Magic extended the lead to 45-39 early in the third quarter before going cold. Williamson scored seven points and Bey, Fears and Hawkins added four each during a 21-7 run that left New Orleans with a 60-52 halftime lead. The Magic made just 2-of-20 3-pointers in the first half.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The New Orleans Pelicans had an opportunity to end three losing streaks Sunday night in the Smoothie King…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":701940,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3796],"tags":[7,6,478,470,4073,4072,675],"class_list":{"0":"post-701939","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-orleans-pelicans","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-nba","10":"tag-new-orleans","11":"tag-new-orleans-pelicans","12":"tag-neworleans","13":"tag-neworleanspelicans","14":"tag-pelicans"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/701939","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=701939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/701939\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/701940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=701939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=701939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=701939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}