When Alvin Gentry was last a part of an NBA organization in New Orleans it was a different team in a different time.
The Hornets franchise for which he was an assistant coach under Tim Floyd back in 2003-04 was always as unsteady as a frat boy in the French Quarter.
Crowds were often small and the questions about the survival of the team were constant.
So when Floyd was dismissed following a loss to Miami in the first round of the playoffs, Gentry didn’t even bother to put his name in for the job.
Now more than a decade later Gentry is back, presumably to take the Pelicans to the next level with a philosophy that puts an emphasis on on speed and pressure at both ends of the court.
It helps, of course, to have Anthony Davis as a foundation, the 22-year-old voted overwhelmingly by NBA general managers this season as the one player they’d most want to construct a franchise around.
However, two games into the new season, the Pelicans are a sick looking 0-2 as they brace for their home opener tonight (7:30 p.m. ET, NBA TV) against the defending champion Warriors.
Despite a simplification of the defense that was supposed to make things easier, the Pelicans have given up 39 and 43 points in the first quarters of their first two games, looking lost to allow penetration and open jumpers. At the same time, their offensive rating of 93.6 ranks just 25th out of 30 teams.
Though Gentry has him looking to take more 3-point shots and consequently moved him farther from the basket, the problem is not the new coach and Davis.
The Pelicans are quite simply broken down already in the early days of the season. Point guard Jrue Holiday is on a severe minutes per game limit until January following his second surgery in two years to repair his right leg. Tyreke Evans, Norris Cole, Omer Asik, Quincy Pondexter and Luke Babbitt are also sidelined with injuries. The team cut veteran guard Nate Robinson after just two games.
Gentry had just nine players available on opening night in Oakland with Holiday sitting out entirely and just 10 when his point guard played 20 minutes in Portland the next night. So it’s been difficult to develop an offensive rhythm, let alone jump-start the offense with an up-tempo style.
“You do have to instill a mindset in a ways and it’s been unfortunate for us because of the injury situation,” said Gentry, who was assistant head coach under Steve Kerr in the Warriors’ drive to the 2015 NBA championship. “I thought that we’d done a good job in the very first preseason game. We were able to score 110 points. We had just been in training camp for four days. So we felt like we were on our way. Now the injury thing has kind of set us back a little bit.
“I think we’ll eventually get it when we have the combination of people that we want to have out there. I think we’re trying to play faster. It is a mindset that you have to have. I think Jrue has done a good job of understanding what we want. I think Eric (Gordon) has really kind of played this way before anyway. A.D., obviously he was built to play this way, so it will be good for him.
“It’s just one of those things where I think we’ll get it. We thought that we would be further along right now. But the injury situation has kind of set us back a little bit, but eventually we’ll be OK.”
For a team that closed fast to grab the final Western Conference playoff berth a year ago and then gave Golden State a push in a deceptive 4-0 first round loss under coach Monty Williams, the 60-year-old Gentry has not been shy about immediately setting the bar higher, putting the heat on the Pelicans and himself.
“They have made the playoffs,” he said. “They did that last year. So you don’t want to have just making the playoffs as a goal. I would think that we would want to try every way that we possibly could to get there and see if we can win a series. Then winning a series, who knows what happens?
“I don’t think anyone picked us last year to win a championship in Golden State. If anybody says that they did, then I think they’re fibbing, OK. I don’t know of one person that said, ‘Hey, Golden State, that’s my team. They’re going to win the championship.’ But I think you have to have that mindset going in. Your team has to believe that they have the ability to win. And if the team has the ability to win, then that’s three-fourths of the battle and you can kinda play as hard as you can, try to execute and let the chips fall where they may.”
It would help if Gentry and the Pelicans could first just get all their chips onto the table.
Fran Blinebury has covered the NBA since 1977. You can e-mail him here and follow him on Twitter.
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