Who Should Utah Jazz Fans Cheer For to Earn the Eighth Seed?

New Orleans Pelicans

Games Back From Eighth Place: 3.5

Key Strength: Twin Towers – Boogie and the Brow

Key Weakness: Everything Else

I may very well upset some folks by leaving the Minnesota Timberwolves off this list and jumping straight to the New Orleans Pelicans despite the fact that they both currently have the exact same record.

Nevertheless, 3.5 games back is a tough hill to climb, especially with so many more consistent teams standing in the way, therefore I’ve opted to leave out the Wolves who I don’t think have much of a chance at all of a late-season surge and have included the Pelicans due to their blockbuster trade that saw them add NBA center extraordinaire DeMarcus Cousins.

However, hypothetically this trade should have made New Orleans much more formidable, but as it turns out, they’ve played pretty poorly in their two games back from the All-Star break. First they were blown out by the Rockets 129-99, then they lost to the Dallas Mavericks, another eight-seed contender, 96-83. And while he’s put up some decent stats overall, Cousins has also been a combined minus-28 in the two contests.

It’s only two games, though, and it’s quite possible that the pairing of Boogie and the Brow will still get things figured out in time to become formidable and perhaps nab that eighth seed.

If they do, in terms of matching up against the Warriors, the Pelicans’ key strength would just so happen to be Golden State’s weakness – size and athleticism in the frontcourt. To be quite honest, for all the Warriors do well, rolling out a starting center like Zaza Pachulia isn’t exactly the best way to stop two monster bigs like DeMarcus Cousins and Anthony Davis.

In fact, Davis has played exceptionally well against Golden State this year and although the Warriors have defeated New Orleans all three times they’ve faced so far, all of the games have been pretty tightly contested as Golden State has won by just ten, eight and four points.

Therefore, given their struggles to contain AD, throw Boogie into the mix who recently defeated the Warriors as a member of the Kings, and we could be talking about a real problem here for a Warriors team lacking talented size in the paint.

Nevertheless, the Pelicans would very much likely find themselves outmatched as outside of those two guys – and I’ll even throw in point guard Jrue Holiday – they don’t have much firepower coming from elsewhere.

While Cousins and Davis could potentially give the Warriors a run for their money, New Orleans’ lack of role players and depth would likely leave them in an absolutely hopeless situation as they’d have little answer to contain or match wits with Golden State’s electric shooting trio of Steph Curry, Klay Thompson and Kevin Durant.