One of New Orleans’ two Western Conference All-Stars is out for the remainder of the season, but if you sense a feeling of positivity around the Pelicans right now, there’s a good reason. At 31-26 with 25 games remaining, New Orleans is well above .500 coming out of the All-Star break for the first time in seven years. Even in their most recent playoff season of 2014-15, the Pelicans were just a game over the break-even mark at the midseason hiatus. They were 20-33 and 23-34 at this stage during the previous two campaigns, respectively.
“Obviously we’re still in a dogfight for the playoffs, but we put ourselves in a (better) position,” said Pelicans third-year head coach Alvin Gentry, “where the last couple years we’ve been trying to dig ourselves out of a hole, because of the injury situation and the things that are going on.