With All-Star chaos engine Anthony Davis and stalwart two-way point guard Jrue Holiday sidelined by injuries, the New Orleans Pelicans entered Sunday's trip north of the border to take on the Toronto Raptors short-handed and seemingly outgunned, in need of another option to carry the day against the East's No. 3 seed. With the clock winding down, the game tied and a win in the balance, Tyreke Evans stepped up and did what he does best:
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With the score knotted at 93 and just under 16 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter, Evans dribbled the ball a step inside half-court, his teammates and their defenders fanned out along the baseline and Raptors guard Greivis Vasquez waiting for him just inside the 3-point arc. The play initially appeared to call for one of the Pelicans' bigs — starter Omer Asik or reserve Alexis Ajinca — to come up to the top of the key and set a screen on Vasquez, but instead, Ajinca cleared to the left wing and Asik slid across to the left side of the basket, opening up a path for Evans to make a right-hand dribble drive to the tin.
He beat Vasquez off the bounce and lofted a runner over the outstretched arms of three Raptors defenders — Vasquez, power forward Amir Johnson (who was trailing the play after following his man, Ajinca, nearly out to the 3-point line) and center Jonas Valanciunas (maybe a half-second slow in rotating away from Asik to protect the rim) — up off the window and through the net. The bucket gave the Pelicans a two-point lead that they would not relinquish, as DeMar DeRozan's attempt at a game-winning 3-pointer went awry, allowing New Orleans to escape with a 95-93 win. The victory brought Monty Williams' club back to .500 on the season at 20-20, leaving the Pelicans three games back of the Phoenix Suns for the eighth and final playoff spot in the West.
Evans finished with a game-high 26 points on 9-for-14 shooting to go with five rebounds, five assists, one steal and four turnovers in the win, which was the Pelicans/former Hornets franchise's first in Toronto in more than six years. But while the former Rookie of the Year's basket with 1.6 seconds remaining clinched the win, it was the 7-foot Ajinca who provided an unlikely spark for the Pelicans.
The reserve center — a first-round pick of the Charlotte Bobcats back in 2008 who briefly played for the Raptors during the 2010-11 season before returning to his native France for a couple of years and rekindling his NBA career with New Orleans last season — scored a career-high 22 points on 10-for-13 shooting in 34 minutes off the bench, including 10 in the fourth quarter to spark the comeback that put the Pelicans in position to win in the closing seconds. It was the second straight solid outing for Ajinca, who scored 16 points and grabbed 14 rebounds in just 25 minutes in the Pelicans' otherwise-dispiriting Friday night blowout at the hands of the Philadelphia 76ers. With premier offseason trade acquisition Asik offering more on the defensive end than the offensive one — the Pelicans have averaged nearly seven more points per 100 possessions with Asik off the court than when he's on it this season, and his 11 points on 5-for-10 shooting against the Raptors marked just the second time in the last month that he's cracked double figures in the scoring column — Ajinca's recent surge has led some to wonder whether Williams should consider inserting the Frenchman in the starting five.
Whether Williams elects to pull that particular trigger remains to be seen, but after the game, the coach seemed pleased with the level of resolve his club showed in bouncing back not only from Friday's loss in Philadelphia, but also to coughing up a 14-point halftime lead by allowing Toronto to dominate the third quarter before righting the ship in the final frame. From Ian Harrison of The Associated Press:
"Doing that without Jrue and AD was big for us," Pelicans coach Monty Williams said [...]
"We say you've got to take a gut punch," Williams said. "Most people don't know how to take a gut punch. We took it tonight in the third quarter. They came out and just blew us off the floor. On the road, after the loss we had the other day in Philly, you would have thought we would have folded and we did not."
And as a result, New Orleans gets a chance to get back over .500 on Monday when they take on the woeful New York Knicks. They could get star big man Davis back just in time for their visit to Madison Square Garden, which would certainly be bad news for a Knicks team that doesn't need much more of that, having lost 16 straight games to fall to an NBA-worst 5-36 on the season.
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don't Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at devine@yahoo-inc.com or follow him on Twitter!
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