The New Orleans Pelicans hold a 31-26 record at the All-Star break. That mark would be good enough to send the team to the NBA Playoffs if it holds over the remaining 25 games of the 2017-2018 campaign. However, it is hard to imagine New Orleans being quite as dangerous down the stretch, as the team is without All-Star center DeMarcus Cousins as a result of an Achilles injury.
Cousins went down in the midst of a tremendous statistical season and much of the attention on the injury has centered on how the former Sacramento Kings center will fare after recovering. With that said, Pelicans star Anthony Davis has done his best to honor his injured teammate and, over All-Star Weekend, he sat down with ESPN’s Rachel Nichols to address a number of issues, including just how dangerous New Orleans may have been with Cousins in the mix.
“We could have gone through the playoffs,” Davis said when prompted on whether he thinks about what could have transpired with the team at full strength. “No one could really stop us as bigs. We go to the Finals if we went.”
Beyond that, Davis cited teammate and former NBA champion Rajon Rondo saying that he “knows what it takes to win championships” and that the Pelicans had it with Cousins and Davis as dominant twin towers on the interior. At the time of Cousins’ injury, the Pelicans were on pace to be the first team in the history of the NBA to have two players average 25 points and 10 rebounds per game and, on the surface, that is quite impressive.
Still, it would be rather aggressive to suggest that New Orleans was a real threat to reach the Finals, especially in the loaded Western Conference. Match-up concerns are real for virtually any team when dealing with the fully healthy Pelicans but, in the same breath, New Orleans has a lack of quality perimeter options that simply can’t be ignored.
Barring superhuman efforts from both Cousins and Davis in tandem, Davis’ views here likely represent a bit of understandable overconfidence.
