time to finish out the 15 and 60 here. Let's get right to it with surprisingly another two teams to go before the Utah Jazz which 538 now projects to get the sixth seed in the playoffs.

We're never getting to the fireworks factory.

The New Orleans Pelicans that will kick it off for us. What are their fundamentals?

There are 29 and 26 7 and 6 and it's last time we covered them just over even net rating puts them 14 10th and offense 16th and defense and despite being three games over 500 530 gives them a 46% chance of making the playoffs.

Yeah, they write it the ship after four straight losses and by the way it's been a narrative that oh man it sucks so much that they lost boogie and I agree obviously it does but oh they were really starting to figure it out.

I think they had one like seven straight at that point but they were winning a lot of close games which is in part why we had to play so many minutes and so it's and now they've lost a few close games since he's been out.

They finally righted the ship yesterday against Brooklyn although they blew a 28 point lead on their way so it does feel like even with the Nicole Miratich in tow this is a team that perpetually I mean really since Anthony Davis has arrived in fact it is just fingers in the

deck while another leak sprat's elsewhere and you know I feel of all these teams that are in the mix right now I mean two of them are going to have to be out.

They seem like the most likely to me not to make it would you agree with that.

Yeah it's between them and the Clippers because both like so the thing with the bottom is when it's 10 teams for eight spots is it's a lot about who stays healthy and the pelicans and Clippers have the largest reason to say well they might not stay healthy.

I mean Anthony Davis has missed time for various things over the years and they need every single guy basically to be healthy the pelicans do and the Clippers are similar I mean they've been good we'll talk about them in a little bit but those two teams and so that's the concern is that I would say at full strength those are probably also the two weakest teams and so if they're the

two weakest and they have the biggest health concerns of course as we know this can strike anybody but knowing what we know right now I would agree with that.

Yeah I would say that the pels and the nuggets have the two weakest coaches as well they're interesting enough to Chris Finch left Denver to go to New Orleans in the off season I think he's done a nice job but some of these rotations from the pelicans have been I don't want to say head scratching because that implies that this wasn't predictable but irregular maybe even that's not the right adjective I'm struggling here at 11 PM at night but bad maybe bad maybe that's the word I was looking for.

As an example of that they've had struggles we've talked about it a lot with with Rondo in the starting line up so against Philly the game before the Brooklyn game they didn't start Rondo so congratulations but instead they started ligands which has almost identical problems and they got killed they were outscored by 14 points.

No it's not almost identical problems it's worse problem offensively offensively if he's a better defender though so that that can help a little bit but they were worked in his minutes that was a game that was closer basically

without those minutes and then against the nets so shortly thereafter Rondo starts in place 42 minutes in that double overtime bananas game and ligands only played three minutes.

Yeah and Rondo at least did have the shot working in that one as he did forget what game it was earlier where he had the 18 points in the first half but it seems to me just the fact that all right we're gonna play ligands and we're gonna get destroyed in this one game

and so now we're just gonna go away from that again he's gonna play three minutes the next game.

I mean when you're just starting a guy and then you get killed and then you just don't play with all the next game it really seems like very ad hoc just a sign of a coaching staff that is searching doesn't really seem to have a plan.

It doesn't really seem to because I mean to me there is a lineup for this team that I don't know if it works or not maybe it won't but it's a theory of hey we're gonna put a ton of shooting around AD and we're gonna have a lineup where you have to guard everyone.

And we're gonna play it off of that and hope that AD can help clean up defensively that rely on good on ball defense from each one more and drew holiday and just have not have a hiding place for people on defense.

And this ligands thing is just like well okay I understand if you don't want to play Rondo right why don't you play Rondo well we're not getting enough shooting on the floor.

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