New Orleans Pelicans (12-36, 15th in the Western Conference) vs. Oklahoma City Thunder (37-10, first in the Western Conference)<\/p>\n
Oklahoma City; Tuesday, 8 p.m. EST<\/p>\n
BOTTOM LINE: Western Conference foes Oklahoma City and New Orleans square off on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The Thunder are 28-6 against conference opponents. Oklahoma City ranks seventh in the Western Conference with 25.4 assists per game led by Shai Gilgeous-Alexander averaging 6.2.<\/p>\n
The Pelicans are 6-25 in Western Conference play. New Orleans is 2-3 in games decided by less than 4 points.<\/p>\n
The Thunder are shooting 49.2% from the field this season, 0.8 percentage points higher than the 48.4% the Pelicans allow to opponents. The Pelicans average 6.9 more points per game (114.8) than the Thunder allow their opponents to score (107.9).<\/p>\n
The teams square off for the third time this season. The Thunder won 126-109 in the last matchup on Nov. 18. Chet Holmgren led the Thunder with 26 points, and Jeremiah Fears led the Pelicans with 24 points.<\/p>\n
TOP PERFORMERS: Holmgren is shooting 57.1% and averaging 17.8 points for the Thunder. Gilgeous-Alexander is averaging 30.9 points over the last 10 games.<\/p>\n
Trey Murphy III is scoring 22.2 points per game with 6.0 rebounds and 3.7 assists for the Pelicans. Zion Williamson is averaging 21.1 points and 6.5 rebounds while shooting 63.0% over the last 10 games.<\/p>\n
LAST 10 GAMES: Thunder: 7-3, averaging 119.3 points, 42.4 rebounds, 24.2 assists, 8.6 steals and 7.5 blocks per game while shooting 49.6% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 109.0 points per game.<\/p>\n
Pelicans: 4-6, averaging 114.8 points, 45.5 rebounds, 24.8 assists, 8.8 steals and 5.7 blocks per game while shooting 47.2% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 116.7 points.<\/p>\n
INJURIES: Thunder: Ajay Mitchell: out (hip), Nikola Topic: out (groin), Jalen Williams: out (thigh), Alex Caruso: out (adductor), Thomas Sorber: out for season (knee), Isaiah Hartenstein: out (calf).<\/p>\n
Pelicans: Dejounte Murray: out (leg).<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
The Associated Press created this story using technology provided by Data Skrive<\/a> and data from Sportradar<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New Orleans Pelicans (12-36, 15th in the Western Conference) vs. Oklahoma City Thunder (37-10, first in the Western…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":290144,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[228472,4225,64,63,590,31647,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-438584","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-228472","9":"tag-article","10":"tag-au","11":"tag-australia","12":"tag-nba","13":"tag-nba-basketball","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=438584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438584\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/290144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=438584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=438584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=438584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}