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The Pelicans and Blazers are the most interesting teams in the playoff chase

Abbie Parr / Getty Images

The NBA is booting up again, and we're looking ahead to how the remainder of the 2019-20 season will play out in the Disney World bubble. This week, we're exploring the most interesting teams playing in Orlando. Up next: Two dynamic offensive squads chasing the West's final playoff spot.

When it comes to quality of play and player buy-in, nobody's quite sure what to expect out of the seeding games in Orlando. The teams already locked into the playoff picture seem likely to treat the contests more like preseason games than high-stakes affairs. Some of them may have particular matchups they prefer, but with home-court advantage no longer a factor, there isn’t a ton of incentive for those teams to go full bore and risk injury or burnout after a four-and-a-half-month layoff.

But for the teams that traveled to Disney for the express purpose of chasing the final playoff spot in the Western Conference, easing off the gas during the seeding stage isn't an option. Which is why those teams could be the most interesting to watch in the lead-up to the postseason. And of those teams, none are remotely as interesting as the New Orleans Pelicans or Portland Trail Blazers.

Even though they’re technically tied in the standings with the Kings and just a half-game up on the Spurs, these two are by far the most serious threats to the Grizzlies, the West's No. 8 seed. They'll be competing mostly with each other for the privilege of taking two swings at Memphis and - if they manage to connect on both - securing a first-round date with the top-seeded Lakers.

Abbie Parr / Getty Images

Because the Blazers have played two additional games, they actually have a microscopic percentage-points advantage despite having the same win-loss differential. In other words, it makes more sense to think of them as having a half-game lead in this race. But the Blazers also have one of the most difficult remaining schedules, while the Pelicans have the easiest slate of any of the 22 teams in Orlando.

Regrettably, we won't get to see the two of them play each other during the seeding stage. But there are plenty of reasons to watch both teams intently.

Friends of Zion

The picture's gotten a bit cloudier for New Orleans, as the team announced Thursday that Zion Williamson departed the Disney campus to attend to an "urgent family medical matter." First and foremost, spare a thought for Williamson and his family. Whatever they're dealing with right now is a whole lot more important than the NBA's Disney experiment.

Williamson intends to rejoin the team, according to the club, but without knowing how long it'll be before he returns (or knowing for certain if he'll return), it's impossible to say what effect this will have, and speculating about it is pointless. What we do know is that in order to re-enter the bubble, he'll be required to test negative every day he's outside it, and then will have to quarantine for four days once he returns, per the league protocol for excused absences.

For the purposes of this exercise, let's assume Williamson is going to play. Even if this absence and the additional quarantine time means he may be behind on his game preparation once the seeding stage begins, he on his own will be enough to make the Pelicans one of the most fascinating teams in the bubble.

Enough's probably been said and written about what Williamson was able to accomplish as a 19-year-old rookie, but certain facts are impossible to overstate or overplay. This dude put up 23.6 points in under 30 minutes a game on 62.4% true shooting. (The only player to score more efficiently on a usage rate above 25% was Karl-Anthony Towns.) He ranked fifth in the NBA in free-throw attempts on a per-minute basis. He took 13.1 shots per game from inside the restricted area, which was 2.5 more than any other player in the league. He was harder to keep away from the rim than Giannis! The Pelicans outscored opponents by 10.4 points per 100 possessions with him on the floor, so when he played they were about as dominant as the Bucks.

New Orleans Pelicans

But while Zion is clearly the main attraction, there are plenty of other reasons to be intrigued by the Pelicans. A couple times a year, Jrue Holiday gets on one of these rolls where he looks like a legit top-10 player. (Eventually he loses his shooting and finishing touch, becomes less assertive, and reverts to merely being extremely good.) He was on one of those heaters the last time he played in the playoffs, absolutely vaporizing the Blazers' backcourt in a stunning Pelicans sweep.

The offense is the thing that comes and goes for Holiday, but his defense is consistently excellent. He might be the single strongest guard-sized player in the league, and he's just as capable of sliding up to jockey with small forwards as he is at chasing point guards through mazes of screens. There's no one Ja Morant would be less excited to see lining up against him in a play-in scenario.

The Lakers imports who came to New Orleans in last summer's Anthony Davis trade are going to have a lot to prove as they get their first taste of high-leverage action. Brandon Ingram is set to become a restricted free agent while Lonzo Ball is about to be extension-eligible, and this spate of games should help illuminate how they fit into the Pelicans' long-term, Zion-centric plans.

Ingram this season made one of the most dramatic year-over-year improvements as a shooter in recent memory. He went from shooting 33% on 1.8 3-point attempts per game to hitting 38.7% on 6.3 attempts, while bumping up his free-throw percentage from 67.5% to 85.8%. He showed a heretofore unseen ability to shoot on the move, off the dribble, coming off pin-downs and handoffs. But while those newfound abilities should make him an ideal complement to Williamson, he struggled a bit to reorient his role once the rookie phenom joined the fray, after spending the first half of the season as the focal point of the Pelicans' offense. His efficiency dipped when the two played together. He's generally looked more comfortable playing on the ball than off, and that may need to change.

Ball might be one of the most interesting players in the NBA. In some ways he's indicative of some of the Pelicans' problems, but in other ways he's essential to what they do. Despite ranking seventh in effective field-goal percentage, New Orleans' overall offensive rating was dragged down to league average thanks to a low free-throw rate and a propensity for turnovers, and Ball is a particularly bad offender in both categories.

The turnover issues, at least, are forgivable; they're sins of commission, rather than omission, and Ball's audacious passing is an indispensable elixir for the Pelicans' offense - especially their transition game. His hit-aheads and long-range lobs to Zion are marvels of both form and function. Still, even as he's turned himself into a reliable 3-point shooter (hitting 38% on a high volume of attempts this season), his hesitancy to attack the basket and his aversion to contact - perhaps due in part to his still-woeful free-throw shooting - puts a cap on how efficient an offensive player he can be, for now.

Jeff Haynes / National Basketball Association / Getty

The big questions for this team, though, come at the defensive end. While a playoff matchup against the Lakers would draw buzz for pitting Davis against the team he jilted - and the transcendent star who immediately replaced him as its face - the central focus of that series, and the thing that would really hinder the Pelicans' ability to give the Lakers a proper scare, is their lack of a big wing defender capable of guarding LeBron James. Holiday would probably be their best option, and for as strong and savvy as he is, the primary LeBron assignment still resides beyond his physical capabilities.

On the back line, the Pelicans are extremely dependent on Derrick Favors, by far their best interior defender. They've played like the league's sixth-best defense with him on the floor compared to its 22nd-ranked defense with him on the bench, and overall they've been 10.2 points per 100 possessions better when he plays.

The good news is, despite being a tenuous on-paper fit, Favors and Williamson proved they can thrive while sharing the court, posting a plus-17 net rating as New Orleans collected an insane 57.8% of available rebounds in their 311 minutes together. Williamson, it turns out, has enough on-ball gravity to negate the spacing issues that come with having two non-shooters up front. Now, whether the two can coexist in a playoff setting while also playing alongside so-so shooters like Ball and Holiday is another matter. Guys like Nicolo Melli and JJ Redick, who do wonders for the Pelicans' spacing, also compromise their defense.

All of which is to say, finding the right crunch-time lineups could be tricky, because it's unclear if their best defensive lineups can score enough, or if their best offensive lineups can get enough stops.

Dame gets some help

If you're looking for reasons to care about the Blazers, you shouldn't need to look much further than Damian Lillard, who was in the midst of a sublime individual season before the stoppage. His counting stats alone, ridiculous as they are - 28.9 points, 7.8 assists, 39.4% from three on 9.9 attempts per game - don't even do it justice. His mastery of the pick-and-roll as both a scorer and playmaker, his ability to warp defenses and manipulate space, and his threat level as a pull-up shooter from anywhere past midcourt, have approached the Steph Curry stratum.

Layne Murdoch Jr. / NBA / Getty

Lillard finished 13.5 possessions per game as a pick-and-roll ball-handler this season, and averaged 1.14 points per possession on those plays. That is - no exaggeration - the greatest season ever recorded by a high-volume pick-and-roll operator. (For comparison's sake, Curry averaged 1.11 points on half the number of pick-and-roll possessions during his legendary 2015-16 MVP campaign.)

Lillard did that while adjusting to playing with a pure dive man in Hassan Whiteside after working with a short-roller in Jusuf Nurkic for the previous three seasons. Removing the guy who'd served as his playmaking middleman shifted a bunch more responsibility to Lillard himself. Those finishes out of the pick-and-roll made up 51.9% of his individual used possessions, up from 44.7% last year, when the Blazers rejiggered their offense to highlight Nurkic's deft high-post passing.

Now, Lillard is getting some much-needed help. Nurkic is returning from the leg fracture that's kept him out for 15 months. Last time we saw him, he was anchoring a surprisingly strong defense as a hyper-patient drop man, while greasing the wheels of a top-five offense. He was probably the Blazers' second-best player. On top of providing a jolt of playmaking, Nurkic is a far better screen-setter than Whiteside, and the sliver of extra space his superior picks offer should make Lillard that much more dangerous. He's also one of the game's best rebounders. There's a reason Portland went from being literally the top rebounding team in the league last year to ranking in the bottom 10 this year.

Third-year big man Zach Collins will also be back in action, after spending eight months recovering from a torn labrum. So, the Blazers are basically welcoming back their starting frontcourt tandem. Collins has yet to demonstrate anything in the way of an in-between game and is probably being shoehorned into the starting power-forward spot out of sheer necessity, but he offers arguably the two most important skills for any complementary big: the ability to protect the rim and to hit threes. Rust should be expected for both him and Nurkic after their extended layoffs, but if nothing else they should help improve Portland's 27th-ranked defense.

Whiteside, for the record, hasn't been bad this year. He's been an effective pick-and-roll companion to Lillard (his 4.7 points per game as a roll man ranked fifth in the league), and a passable rim-protector despite a penchant for leaving his feet. He actually owns the biggest positive on-off differential on the team, though that's mostly reflective of what's been a complete lack of big-man depth behind him. So long as he doesn't succumb to his habit of grousing when his role and playing time get scaled back, Whiteside can be a valuable backup. Assuming Nurkic can at least approximate the player he was before his injury, the Blazers should be getting 48 minutes of quality center play, which is a far cry from where they've been all season, with undersized guys like Caleb Swanigan and Anthony Tolliver backing up Whiteside.

Sam Forencich / NBA / Getty

There's naturally going to be less excitement about the Blazers making the playoffs over the Grizzlies or Pelicans due to those teams' novelty factors, but Portland might be better equipped to actually give the Lakers a series thanks to its collective experience and confidence, especially after reaching the West finals without Nurkic last year.

They have reason to feel good now that Nurkic is back and Lillard has found another level. CJ McCollum, too, was playing his best ball of the season while Lillard was sidelined with a groin injury in the weeks leading up to the shutdown. The memory of what he's capable of as a playoff scorer should still be fresh in everyone's minds.

That said, the Blazers have the exact same problem the Pelicans do, with a distinct lack of wing defense and no one on the roster who would offer much hope of even slowing down LeBron. Portland let Al-Farouq Aminu and Maurice Harkless walk last summer, and the forward rotation has been a hot mess ever since. Things only got more dire when Collins went down three games into this season and Rodney Hood tore his Achilles in December. Trevor Ariza made for a solid stopgap as a late-season acquisition, but he opted out of Orlando, which is more costly to the Blazers than it might appear given their lack of alternatives.

Carmelo Anthony may be excited about moving back to the 3 now that Collins is back, but he's nobody's idea of a perimeter stopper, especially at this stage of his career. Nassir Little is the closest thing the Blazers have to a physical prototype for the job, but he's also a rookie with a completely underdeveloped offensive skill set.

But hey, Lillard and McCollum are always guaranteed to make the Blazers watchable, and to give them a fighting chance against anyone. Beyond that, the prospect of seeing Nurkic suit up (and talk trash) again, and watching Melo play what could be some of the last meaningful games of his career, should be enough to win this team some sentimental support.

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