The Pelicans' theft acquisition of DeMarcus Cousins in the final hours of All-Star weekend brought a measure of excitement to New Orleans basketball unseen since before Chris Paul got shipped off to Hollywood, but the on-court product, to this point, has failed to live up to the hype.
In principle, pairing Cousins with Anthony Davis figured to give the Pelicans an unstoppable front line featuring arguably the two best bigs in the game. In practice, it's been a less-than-seamless transition, and the Pelicans have dropped their first two games of the Cousins era by a combined 43 points.
If this were early in the season there would be no cause for alarm, but the Pelicans are trying to run down a playoff spot, and are now three-and-a-half games out of the West's eighth seed with just 23 games to play. They need to figure things out, in a hurry.
"We don't have the luxury of being a little bit better," head coach Alvin Gentry told reporters after Saturday's loss to the Dallas Mavericks, according to ESPN's Justin Verrier. "It's got to be quickly. It's got to be something that happens right away."
The Pelicans have three games remaining against the Denver Nuggets, the team currently occupying the eight-spot, so to a certain extent they control their own destiny. But with three rotation players shipped to Sacramento in the Cousins deal, and Omri Casspi now off the roster after breaking his thumb in his first game in New Orleans, the Pelicans' lack of depth has been laid bare, and their issues may be too great to overcome in the season's final six weeks.
"It's been tough the past two games," said Cousins, who in his seventh NBA season has still yet to taste the playoffs. "Guys are a little frustrated. But I believe the frustration (means) our hearts and our intentions are in the right place. We want to get these things right. We want to correct these mistakes. We want to get our chemistry going."
Davis, who said he couldn't sleep last Sunday because of how excited he was about playing with Cousins, thinks the two might still need some time to get on the same page.
"We try to run plays that we just went over yesterday," he said. "DeMarcus has probably been running the same plays for eight years in the league. And now, here, on the fly, he's got to change it up."
The Pelicans did show some flashes Saturday of the team lurking somewhere beneath. They ran up 30 points on the Mavs in a blazing first quarter, and the triumvirate of Davis, Cousins, and Jrue Holiday finished with a combined 69 points and 36 rebounds. But they got just 14 points from the rest of the roster and managed just 53 as a team over the final three quarters.
"We showed signs, again, of what we could be," Davis said. "But one quarter or 20 minutes is not going to cut it."