New Orleans Pelicans Suffer Embarrassing 51 Point Loss To Warriors Monday Night

Good news: the New Orleans Pelicans started Herb Jones. Bad news: it was because Zion Williamson and Trey Murphy didn't play. Even worse news: the Pelicans gave a performance reminiscent of the last two years, as they lost by 51 points (138-87) to the Golden State Warriors on Monday night.

This mercifully puts an end to an awful two-game West Coast trip for the Pelicans as they drop to 4-7 on the season. It feels like just yesterday that New Orleans was at .500 with a ton of momentum. That has come to a halting screech.

There really wasn't anything positive to take away from this performance. Derik Queen had 16 points on eight shots with four rebounds and three blocks, but he was still -30 and didn't record an assist.

Losing this game is not the issue. It's how they lost and how they looked. The Warriors are on an eight-game winning streak, they are red hot. The Pelicans didn't have their two best offensive players in Williamson and Murphy. But they did have two of their three highest-paid players and the rest of their young core, but no one had a good showing.

Jordan Poole was back in the lineup after being a healthy scratch for a few games. Which, it's never easy to just get back into rhythm in an instant, but he was a -47. Poole had seven points on five shots in 34 minutes. Sometimes the team needs him to get shots up; this was one of those nights.

Murray played 18 minutes and had 12 points on 10 shots, but only one assist. New Orleans, as a team, had just 21 assists. Jeremiah Fears had eight assists, but the unit as a whole did a bad job of sharing the ball and then following through on the make when someone did find a teammate.

New Orleans shot 36% from the field, 29% from three and 88% from the charity stripe. Part of the reason this game got so out of hand was that they couldn't hit a shot to save their lives, while Golden State couldn't miss and had wide-open opportunities. The Warriors shot 21-of-44 from deep. It would be hard for this Pelicans team to keep up with that on the best nights.

At the very least, New Orleans gets to go home now. The Pelicans will begin a five-game home stand on Wednesday, as they attempt to get things back on track before this season gets late early.