After taking down the in-form Clippers two nights ago, the Pelicans are aiming to win their 5th game on the bounce as they take on the Lakers at crypto.com Arena. New Orleans didn’t have the best of times in their last road game against the Lakers, as they were blown out 133-89 back in the beginning of December, they just couldn’t make a basket in that game shooting just 35% from the field and 22% from downtown. They did bounce back nicely with a 129-109 win on New Year’s day at home, tying the regular season series at 1 win each. This team has really caught fire in the last couple of weeks, 3 of their 4 wins during this win streak have been by double digits, so the Lakers could be in some trouble here, especially since they are playing their 2nd game in two nights.
In this scenario the Lakers have just 2 wins in 8 games, and are currently on a 3-game losing streak. Losing to the Nuggets for the 7th time in a row is concerning, but what is even more concerning ahead of tonight’s game is the fact that we don’t know the status of either LeBron James or Anthony Davis. These two have missed 2nd nights of back-to-backs often this season, without either of them the Lakers are a lot weaker team. Especially Davis who loves playing against his former team, he’s averaging 26.6 points and 13.2 rebounds per game in the last 5 meetings. To the surprise of many, the Lakers stayed quiet on the trade deadline yesterday, so it would appear that the management in charge has a lot of faith in the current selection of players. It’ll be interesting to see if they can cover the spread here, in their last 6 games they’ve done so 4 times.
