A failure to close out games. We witnessed that script one too many times over the course of the regular season before the coronavirus shutdown, and sadly, nothing’s different more than four months later.
Each team traveling to the Orlando bubble was given eight seeding games to play on the schedule prior to the start of the playoffs, so amid a pack of four teams trailing the Memphis Grizzlies in the Western Conference race by 3.5-4 games entering tonight, the Pelicans could ill afford to throw away a single victory.
Of course, that’s precisely what they did in the opener.