The Milwaukee Bucks and the New Orleans Pelicans fought a hot battle in overtime. With 36 points, Jrue Holiday led his cars to victory. Before that, the Detroit pistons had a harsh clap from the Charlotte Hornets.
In the fight for the playoff places in the east, the Detroit pistons received a severe blow in the neck – and this against a direct competitor. The Charlotte Hornets gave Blake Griffin and Co. clearly swept out of the hall with 114:98 – and presented themselves in a truly worrying form.
Led by Kemba Walker (17 points, 6 assists) the Hornets were superior in all respects and already led at the half time with 24 points. As a result, the pistons did not manage to shorten the distance significantly, let alone reach eye level.
Charlotte’s total of six players scores two-digit numbers. Walker received the biggest support from Dwight Howard (17 points, 12 rebounds) and Nic Batum (15 points, 9 assists), while the most likely form of support came from the Pistons Griffin (20.6 turnover), Andre Drummond (14 points, 14 rebounds) and Ish Smith (14 points, 8 assists).
The NBA live at SPOX! All games in the LIVESTREAM calendar
Charlotte repeatedly scored points with clever cuts and was extremely accurate from downtown (16/35 3FG). The Bank of the Hornets was also far superior to the second guard from Motown and alone was responsible for outstanding 51 points.
The home win against the pistons was already the fourth victory in a row. In the night from Tuesday to Wednesday the Chicago Bulls are guests in Charlotte. The pistons are two games behind eighth place after the defeat and face tough challenges ahead of them in the next two games with the Raptors and Bucks.
What a game in the (local time) early afternoon! The New Orleans Pelicans and Milwaukee Bucks fought a hot battle – with the better end for the Pelicans. At the half-time break, however, it looked like a clear case – for Milwaukee.
At this point in time, the Pelicans were already 17 points behind after Tony Snell chased a threesome through the reuse with 0.3 seconds on the clock. However, NOLA coach Alvin Gentry obviously found the right words for the break tea: The third quarter went with 38:19 to the guests, who not only came back under the direction of Jrue Holiday (36 points, 9 rebounds, 8 assists) but were also able to take the lead. In the last section, no team managed to clear away from each other, which is why the fans saw an extremely exciting crunchtime.
Eric Bledsoe (20 points, 9 rebounds, 5 assists) hit a midranger about half a minute before the end to 114:114. After E’ Twaun Moore missed a leger 15 seconds before the end, Anthony Davis was fouled in the fight for the rebound. Since the Pelicans were not yet in the bonus, there was a throw-in at the sidelines, which landed by detours with Nikola Mirotic (14 points, 7 rebounds). He let two defenders drop out with fakes, but didn’t hit the open threesome.
Whoever was looking forward to a duel between superstars Davis and Giannis Antetokounmpo (20 points) in the overtime was disappointed. The Greek was clearly aware that the Bucks had to face the Raptors the day before, and Davis also seemed rather tired.
Instead, the decisive players were Rajon Rondo (16 points, 12 assists) for the Pelicans and Khris Middleton (25 points) for Milwaukee. Rondo scored 5 of the 9 Pels points in the OT 5. He almost became a fool when he threw an inbound pass into the hands of the Bucks at 123:121 just before the end. But they couldn’t accept the gift: Giannis missed his attempt, Jason Terry met him, but the watch had already run out. So New Orleans came out on top and celebrated the fifth victory in a row.