The two teams with the worst records in the NBA will face off when the Washington Wizards visit the New Orleans Pelicans on Friday night.
The Wizards have only six wins this season, but three of them have come in their last seven games. The Pelicans have won just five games and are on an 11-game losing streak, having lost 20 of their last 21 games.
While Washington is at the bottom of the Eastern Conference, New Orleans is the worst team in the entire league.
The Wizards are coming off their biggest win of the season, a 125-107 victory over the Chicago Bulls at home on Wednesday.
“It’s just been a focus over the last month or so,” Wizards guard Jordan Poole said. “We’ve been trending in the right direction. We’re just playing the right way, getting guys involved, using ball movement to get easy shots. We’re just continuing to learn and grow as a team.”
Poole has been leading the team, scoring 25 points or more in each of his last five games, including 30 points in the win over the Bulls. But he’s not doing it alone. Six other players scored in double figures, and the Wizards finished with 36 assists on 49 made shots against Chicago.
“That’s how we want to play,” said head coach Brian Keefe, who mentioned that the Wizards’ “defense and sharing the ball” have been key to the team’s improvement.
“Jordan creates a crowd,” Keefe said. “He generates two on the ball by his shot-making and his penetration and that gets a lot of our ball movement started.”
The Pelicans lost to Miami 119-108 on Wednesday, but during their current losing streak, they have lost by small margins—five points, two points, three points in overtime, and three points in regulation.
They’ve also had losses by 15, 17, and 20 points during this run, and they’ve lost leads in the fourth quarter or fallen into big holes early. That was the case against the Heat, who took a 20-5 lead midway through the first quarter.
“The sense of urgency has to be there to start the game,” New Orleans head coach Willie Green said. “They got out to an early lead and it was an uphill battle the rest of the way.”
Forward Trey Murphy III has been stepping up recently, averaging 26.1 points over the last seven games, higher than his season average of 20.8 points. Murphy almost reached his season-high with 34 points against the Heat and matched his season-high with five 3-pointers out of 15 attempts.
The Pelicans are still playing without their top two scorers, Zion Williamson and Brandon Ingram, as well as top backup Jose Alvarado. The trio usually combines for more than 55 points per game.
“We’re undermanned right now,” Murphy said. “A lot of those times when you’re undermanned, you really have to fight when the margin of error is really small. We don’t have our guys right now. That’s hard for any team to deal with. People are stepping up, trying to make up for that and figure things out.”
