The New Orleans Pelicans have had a few days to decompress after their disappointing collapse against the Denver Nuggets and focus on their next opponent: also the Nuggets.

Denver is coming to town on Wednesday night after a loss to the Golden State Warriors on Monday. Now both teams will enter this rematch in a bad mood.

The Nuggets are 1-2 despite being a team that wants to compete for a title. The Pelicans, though they don’t yet have a win, should feel confident that they can get their revenge.

New Orleans built out a 23-point lead on the road in Denver. Even though the end of that game was brutal, they did show a lot of good stuff. Here are some mistakes they made the first time that they need to avoid in hopes of a victory:

Over the first three quarters, the Nuggets had zero answers for Murphy. In that time, Murphy was super aggressive. He had 14 shots in three quarters and finished the game with 26 points. Over the fourth quarter and overtime, just three shots. Murphy has just one shot in 17 minutes of clutch time basketball. This team needs one of their best offensive players to be emphasized down the stretch rather than buried.

One of the main reasons why Murphy has disappeared late in games is that the ball has stopped moving. When the offense was at its best in that game, the ball was flowing. Ball handlers were finding open shooters. Smart decisions were made. Towards the end, the offense slowed down and the ball was stuck again. They need to get out of that habit and change the late approach.

On top of the ball movement slowing down, they also started giving up the ball. They went over four minutes without a field goal and didn’t even get a shot off with what should have been the games final possession. New Orleans lost the turnover battle 18-to-12. Giving Jamal Murray and Nikola Jokic extra possessions is never smart, but especially in a game that ended up in going to overtime.

One of the most frustrating trends with the Pelicans last season was consistently watching role players have career nights. The first major culprit this season was 2026 second-round pick Trevon Brazile. He has scored 10 points in total in the other two games, but went off for 17 points, grabbed nine rebounds and forced his only three turnovers against New Orleans. They need to slow him down this time.