The red T-shirts placed on every Smoothie King Center seat Saturday for fans attending the New Orleans Pelicans’ pivotal Game 3 against the Oklahoma City Thunder read “Get Loud.”
If only the Pelicans would have given their fans a reason to do so. They didn’t, which has been the norm lately.
And because of that, the season is hanging on by a thread after a 106-85 loss that buried the Pelicans into one of those 3-0 holes that no team in NBA history has ever been able to climb out of.
This team most surely won’t, either.
Not even Zion Williamson, who sat on the bench in a brown jogging suit, could rescue the Pels now. If his hamstring all of a sudden heals and he plays Monday, maybe the Pelicans could steal a win at home and send the series back to Oklahoma City for a gentleman’s sweep instead of the regular kind.
But that’s about all there is left to play for now.
The Thunder continued to play like the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference that it is, while the Pelicans continued to look nothing like the team that was in the hunt for the fourth spot in the West just a few short weeks ago.
The Pels now have lost eight of their last 10 games in the Smoothie King Center, a building that has become more of a home-court disadvantage than an advantage. It was OKC that started that home skid with a 119-112 win back on March 26.
Any day now — and perhaps as early as Monday — that same OKC team will put a lid on a Pelicans’ season that seemed so promising a month ago.
This series started with so much hope, with the Pelicans dropping a game they probably could have won on Sunday.
But it quickly changed, going from the Pelicans almost stealing the first game to the Thunder beating the Pelicans as if they had stolen something.
The Pels' last two losses were by 32 points and 21 points, respectively. How bad have the Pelicans been through three games? Well, it had been eight years since a team has been held under 93 points in three straight playoff games.
Poor shooting (9 of 32 on 3-pointers) and 20 turnovers did the Pels in Saturday. It’s the perfect recipe for disaster against a team that doesn’t need any help. Making things even tougher is the Pels have yet to have a player to rise to the playoff occasion.
CJ McCollum missed his first seven shots Saturday before finishing with 16 points on 7-of-22 shooting.
“It’s hard to win games if I’m not being efficient, if I’m not being productive,” McCollum said afterward.
Brandon Ingram, who finished with 19 points on 7-of-14 shooting, was equally honest.
“I’m not happy with any of my performances from the playoffs,” he said.
The Pels haven’t had a player score 20 points in the series since Game 1 when Trey Murphy scored 21 and McCollum had 20. Simply put, that’s not going to get it done. Someone has to be step up and be the go-to guy, much like OKC’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander has done for the Thunder.
“They are a good defense for a reason,” Pelicans coach Willie Green said. “To beat this team, we have to be really sound with our execution.”
And even that may not be enough against a Thunder team that has dominated the entire series other than a five-plus minute scoring drought in the fourth quarter of the first game.
The Pels have one more game to try to figure it out, a task that is just as daunting as the one rapper Choppa had with 6:19 left in the game Saturday. During a timeout, Choppa performed his song “Choppa Style,” a hit that usually always gets a New Orleans sports crowd going. Not on this day, though. The Pels were down by 21 by then and many fans had headed for the exits.
And many of them probably won’t be coming back Monday night for Game 4 after what they witnessed. The Pelicans have been swept only once in franchise history, losing to the Golden State Warriors in the 2014-15 playoffs.
“The series is not over,” McCollum said. “We have to compete and show some pride.”
That's all they are playing for after Saturday's clunker.