With no real high draft pick to draw attention, the New Orleans Pelicans have had to battle as a team this summer. They are even without their 2017 draft selection, Frank Jackson. They were guaranteed five games coming into the league and looked as that was all they were going to get. However, they earned at least one more game with a 105-95 victory over the Atlanta Hawks in Wednesday’s first round. The team ran a relatively short rotation of just nine players, with three of them seeing over thirty minutes.
The Pelicans maintained control of the game with a 33-point outburst in the second quarter that saw them outscore the Hawks by 16.