NEW ORLEANS — The New Orleans Pelicans are playing their best basketball of the season in the new year.
They've won six out of seven games, and in their last two wins, they dominated the Sacramento Kings and Golden State Warriors. They won by 33 points to open up their road trip on Sunday and beat the Warriors by 36 points on Thursday night.
"It's beautiful basketball to watch. It's beautiful basketball to be a part of. This is fun," Willie Green said after Thursday's win.
The win in San Fransico was an all-around team win, with eight Pelicans scoring in double digits.
"I would say we have the deepest team in the entire league. We're about close to where we need to have that conversation about the Pelicans," Trey Murphy said.
It's no coincidence that the team is playing at its best when they are at their healthiest.
Murphy is one of Pels' key rotation players who missed significant time during the season. CJ McCollum, Larry Nance Jr, Jose Alvarado, and Naji Marshall have all missed at least nine games this year.
Often injured star Zion Williamson has only missed seven games this season, but half of those were for rest. His co-star Brandon Ingram has been the healthiest of the tandem, missing just three games. Ingram will surpass his game played total from last season with just 11 more appearances this year.
At 23-15, the Pelicans have risen to the sixth in the Western Conference standings. The team is riding a seven-game road winning streak. During the streak, their average margin of victory is 22.9 points.
Since their embarrassing loss to the Los Angeles Lakers in the In-Season Tournament semifinals, they're 11-4. Three of those wins did come against three of the worst teams in the NBA (Washington Wizards 6-31, Charlotte Hornets 8-27, San Antonio Spurs 6-30), but they've also come out on top against teams ahead of them in the West.
A few of their impressive wins during the turnaround were against the top-seed in the West, the Minnesota Timberwolves, who they beat twice in the last month by double digits each time.
"We're enjoying basketball, playing great basketball... It's fun to play that way," center Jonas Valanciunas said.
The Pels road trip continues Friday against the defending champs, the Denver Nuggets on Friday night. The trip will finish with two games in Dallas on Saturday and Monday.
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