Willie Green was fired<\/a> 12 games into the season.<\/p>\nAdvertisement<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen he got to the arena, I had a quick conversation with him,\u201d Borrego said. “He was ready to go and we made the move.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jordan played so well, Borrego kept him on the court for nearly 32 minutes.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis impact defensively for us tonight was massive,\u201d Borrego said. “To be a good defensive ball club in this league, you’ve got to have some type of physicality, rim protection, deterrence, a presence in the middle \u2014 and he provided that.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was phenomenal defensively in so many ways,\u201d Borrego continued. \u201cEven shots he didn\u2019t block, they weren\u2019t sure that they wanted to get in there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jordan’s blocks ranged from him swatting away Kellly Oubre Jr.’s driving floater to his leaping deflection of VJ Edgecombe’s 3-point attempt. He also scored six points, highlighted by an alley-oop dunk of a feed from Herb Jones.<\/p>\n
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\u201cAny time you can go out a compete in this league, it\u2019s a gift, man,” Jordan said. \u201cIt was cool to be able to go out there and play tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jordan, who was an All-Star in 2017 with the Los Angeles Clippers, said he stayed ready this season by participating in regular five-on-five scrimmages with other players who’d logged relatively few minutes. His minimal playing time wasn’t surprising or discouraging to him, he said, because he understood the Pelicans signed him to help develop younger interior players such as Queen, Yves Missi, Karlo Matkovic and Zion Williamson.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s a part of the job,” Jordan said. \u201cThey\u2019ve got bigs that are part of their future. So, coming in, I knew it was going to be: Play some nights, maybe not play some nights, be a mentor. But when my number is called, I\u2019ve got to be ready.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jordan’s mentorship also was on display when he stepped between Queen and Sixers center Andre Drummond after they’d begun shoving during a heated exchange under the basket.<\/p>\n
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Jordan grinned and said, \u201cI’ve got fresh legs,\u201d when asked if he could envision playing regularly during New Orleans’ 24 remaining regular-season games.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not about me or one guy,” Jordan said. \u201cBut tonight I got the opportunity to play and I took advantage of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jordan, Borrego said, deserved the type of game he had in front of an appreciative home crowd.<\/p>\n
“He deserves all that comes with tonight,” Borrego said. \u201cHe’s elevated our program in so many ways that will never be discussed anywhere but in our locker room.\u201d<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP NBA: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/NBA<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW ORLEANS (AP) \u2014 After a vintage performance, New Orleans Pelicans center DeAndre Jordan was looking forward to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":496626,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[113499,64,63,10551,7231,88074,175412,7236,5130,590,3879,7210,9688,85,9694,147774,7226],"class_list":{"0":"post-496625","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-andre-drummond","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-deandre-jordan","12":"tag-derik-queen","13":"tag-herb-jones","14":"tag-james-borrego","15":"tag-los-angeles-clippers","16":"tag-milwaukee","17":"tag-nba","18":"tag-new-orleans","19":"tag-new-orleans-pelicans","20":"tag-philadelphia-76ers","21":"tag-sports","22":"tag-vj-edgecombe","23":"tag-yves-missi","24":"tag-zion-williamson"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496625","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=496625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496625\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/496626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=496625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=496625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=496625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}