Pelicans blasts Clippers with a 135-115 win.

NBA, Clippers vs Pelicans: Brandon Ingram and Jonas Valanciunas for a smooth victory over the Los Angeles Clippers, 135-115. For Clippers, only Paul George performed but none other could support him.

Clippers failed to stop the Pelican in the paint and mainly Valanciunas. Some tough plays in the second and third quarters weren’t enough for the Clippers.

Valanciunas showed his strength early on with a three, followed by a bullying two from the post, and then again a three to give a trailer of his night. He had 13 points in the first quarter alone and was aided support from Ingram’s 11 points in the opening quarter.

The battle went head to head for a few minutes as they were not doing what they did against the Warriors, shooting the ball inefficiently. However, good the offense is for the Clippers, Pelicans offense was on a different level leaving 18-12 in the five minutes play.

From there on, they played sloppy basketball and turnovers started to happen for the Clippers. They needed a timeout with 3:28 to go in the opening quarter when they went down almost 15 points.

The second quarter saw Clips fighting back their way from a couple of back-to-back threes of Serge Ibaka. Unfortunately, Joans Balanciunas had found his rhythm to end with 29 points first-half points. Pelicans still held the 15 points lead at the break.

Turnovers were certainly the key to the game. The clippers had 7 more turnovers than the hosts who had only 8. Out of them, seven were made by Paul Geroge alone. Coming from a back-to-back game, tiredness covered the Clippers but still they were pretty good from the field.

The fourth quarter showed that the Clippers are now set, but it was too late. They started cutting the lead but the opening quarter deficit haunted them till the last. They could not overcome their sloppy play and nor could they stop Jonas Valanciunas’ humongous outing of 39 points.

After facing back-to-back hot shooting nights from Steph Curry yesterday and Valančiūnas tonight, a defensive Clippers team looks to get back to their winning ways on Wednesday against the Kings.