Milwaukee Bucks: 3 things to watch for squaring off against New Orleans Pelicans

Fly, Pelicans, fly

At 20-30, the Pelicans have certainly climbed out of the NBA’s basement, which they were sitting in during the first time they met with the Bucks nearly two months ago.

Of course, the debut of Williamson in late January has given New Orleans reason to keep their foundation intact as all teams wonder which direction they take ahead of Thursday’s deadline. The 19-year-old rookie forward certainly hasn’t disappointed since making his debut back on January 22 and appears to have been lifted from his minutes restriction as he missed the first three months of the season recovering from a torn meniscus.

It’s a small sample size, but in his six games this season, Williamson is averaging 19.5 points on .615/.667/.531 shooting splits, 8.2 rebounds, 1.7 assists across 26.3 minutes per game. And Williamson already logs a +14.9 net rating over his 158 minutes on the floor, which would rank second in the NBA behind Bucks guard Donte DiVincenzo, per NBA.com/stats.

The Pelicans are now 3-3 since introducing Williamson into the fold and it hasn’t been a totally seamless transition as their fourth quarter meltdown showed in their loss to the Houston Rockets Sunday afternoon. Afterwards, New Orleans head coach Alvin Gentry took the blame and was adamant about having the offense run through the Duke product more often moving forward as ESPN’s Andrew Lopez relayed:

"“We didn’t execute and we didn’t do what we were supposed to do,” Gentry said. “Being said, Zion can’t go four minutes without touching the basketball and that’s on me. That’s something that I’ve got to make sure that will never happen again. So I take responsibility for that. And if we’re not gonna give it to him and not gonna execute, then we gotta have different people in the game. That’s on me also.”"

Perhaps we’ll start to see that against the Bucks Tuesday night.