Dejounte Murray – The Pelicans should be “embarrassed” by their recent loss

Suffice it to say, Dejounte Murray enjoyed his first game in a New Orleans Pelicans jersey much more than his long-awaited second.

Boos rained down from a large and initially lively crowd on Thanksgiving evening as they watched the Toronto Raptors – a team winless in 10 road games – take a 34-point lead in the second half.

“If you’re not ashamed of it and you’re really angry about it, that’s a problem,” Murray said after New Orleans extended its losing streak to six games with Wednesday night’s 119-93 loss.

“It’s not really about the loss, it’s about how we lost in front of our fans,” Murray continued. “Even the fans are booing – I mean, what would you do if you paid your money as a fan? You want to watch a basketball game, especially your home team. So they all have a say in what they want, feel, how they feel. You deserve a better game.

The Pelicans have looked distraught since Murray broke his hand at the end of their season-opening win over Chicago on Oct. 23. With Zion Williamson and other starters still in the lineup, they got off to a 2-0 start.

Since then, the top eight players in the Pelicans rotation have been injured and New Orleans has lost 15 of 17 games and is 4-15 overall in the highly competitive Western Conference.

Injuries to Murray, Williamson (left hamstring), Brandon Ingram (right calf), CJ McCollum (right adductor), Herb Jones (right shoulder), Trey Murphy III (left knee bruise), Jose Alvarado (left hamstring) and Jordan Hawkins (back ). ) have taken their toll.

Murray missed 17 games before returning to the lineup on Wednesday, one game after McCollum returned from a 13-game absence. Williamson, Ingram, Murphy, Jones and Alvarado all remained out of the lineup.

“When you have guys in, guys out, guys in, guys out, it’s really tough,” Murray said. “But I think it’s not difficult to keep up.

“You can’t let yourself be beaten up. You can’t let yourself be pushed around,” Murray added. “It was just disgusting tonight. We have to keep up. We have to play harder no matter who is on the floor.”

Unsurprisingly, Murray was rusty, missing his first seven shots before finishing with 14 points. McCollum scored 19 points. But that wasn’t nearly enough to compensate for the weak defense against Toronto suggested by coach Willie Green and McCollum.

The Raptors entered New Orleans last in the NBA with 10.4 3-pointers made per game. They scored a season-best 21 against the Pelicans.

“Either they got better overnight or we have to do a better job and make it harder,” McCollum said.

“It was a terrible thought,” he added. “From top to bottom, we all need to do better.”

Green, the Pelicans’ fourth-year coach, lamented what he called a “lack of competition.”

“We let a team come to our house and make us look really soft,” Green said. “I told our group that. This can’t happen.”

The Pelicans have 63 games left to try to get back into contention for at least a play-in spot. Their performance in Memphis on Friday evening will show how serious they are about turning things around.

“We allowed a team to come to our house and make us look really soft. I told our group that. This can’t happen.”

Pelicans coach Willie Green

The players were given part of Thursday off to spend the holidays with family before taking a short flight to Memphis on Thursday evening.

“As soon as we get on the plane, we need to understand what just happened,” Murray said. “You don’t want bad habits to carry over.”

While McCollum stressed that injuries made it “difficult to establish rhythms and rotations,” he described the recent loss as “just a bad game that we can’t play.”

“Time is ticking,” McCollum said. “And it doesn’t get any easier.”