McCollum tied his career record with 50 points, while Pool scored 26 7 points. Pelicans defeated Wizards to end 11-game losing streak

Western Conference's worst team vs. Eastern Conference's worst team - the New Orleans Pelicans took on the Washington Wizards in a play-in race game today, and the Pelicans ended up taking this game from the Wizards in convincing fashion by sending their former first overall pick, John Wall, to a press conference rather than the court. The Wizards are trying to climb out of a hole - they're 12.5 games behind the New York Knicks in the race for 10th place. If you thought this would go long, you were wrong. This will have implications for a lot of other teams' seeding, as the Knicks, Hornets, Thunder, and Pacers will all feel a big impact from this result. They didn't make a single lineup change in today's game. All of that was decided yesterday and they stuck with what they had planned.

New Orleans has been without Zion Williamson and Ingram for multiple months and both players seem to be a long way from even practicing with the team right now as they both battle through various ailments. This puts Ingram 34th in the NBA in salary and 33rd in Value Over Replacement Player (VORP). The Pelicans have the No. 3 ranked defense and No. 7 ranked offense in Basketball Reference's True Team Ratings when both Zion and Ingram are missing. Their team culture has become more positive - they are much less of a punchline for basketball fans now compared to last year, even with this loss. The Wizards, meanwhile, are just trying to find ways to lose games. They've been blown out in their past two losses by the Bulls and Hawks, and today the Pelicans joined that group.

Washington had the No. 7 defense (which makes sense because they have a historically good rim protector, Daniel Gafford, and a pretty good player in the backcourt), but their offense has continued to struggle. The Wizards traded away their second-rounder, the one they got from the Pelicans, for a first-rounder in what we thought was one of the best moves of the draft, and their offense just hasn't clicked. They got off to a terrible start and have struggled through a long, frustrating year. They were 29-53 last year, but are now 26 games worse at this point (30-39 for the season and only with 25 games remaining), so they're a long way off a lottery spot right now, but they are still better than a few other teams in the East at least. The Wizards' bench has been struggling all season so it's tough to expect them to get anything from there, especially with the Pelicans bench being one of the better teams in basketball and with them losing for the last couple of months in order for them to build some chemistry.

Today's game: New Orleans was missing Williamson and Ingram and Washington started John Wall. The Wizards didn't seem to have much interest in their starting five playing, though, because they subbed out almost all of them and started using their second unit very early in the game. There was a five-minute stretch at the end of the first period and beginning of the second where the Wizards went for more than two full minutes without even attempting a field goal, as the team looked more like they were playing for next season in the NBA than for winning now. The Pelicans ended up starting to find some shots from behind the arc, making a number of big 3's. They shot 51%, but their assist percentage was only 46%, and they didn't play defense, allowing the Wizards to shoot 51 percent on the day. They had no answers for the Wizards in this one, despite losing the starting center, Jonas Valanciunas, and a backup guard, Tre Jones, to foul trouble in the first half.

Washington's bench took over with eight points each from Montrezl Harrell and Josh Primo and five from D.J. Augustin, and they were the only real weapons for New Orleans in the first half - they all made four baskets combined, while the rest of New Orleans only scored one field goal each. The team went scoreless for long stretches - the Wizards went on a 36-4 run - before Augustin knocked the ball out of John Wall's hands on a drive and got a bucket at the rim, finally ending the scoreless drought at 51 seconds. There were a lot of mistakes and unforced errors in the half - the Wizards' only 4-point lead at the end of the half came off an untimely turnover on a drive late in the half - but the Pelicans ended up taking a narrow, one-point lead at halftime.

The Pelicans, though, got back together, finding their offense after the halftime buzzer. They started making more plays on the offensive glass - Valanciunas was a plus-40 while he played (and was still in foul trouble for most of them - he had four fouls by the time half was over - but still helped his team by drawing a charge on Jalen Smith). The Wizards couldn't stop their run and eventually the second half was in the books, and the Wizards were still trailing in this game. They couldn't make it happen, and the Pelicans, despite being without their two best players, still won the game in overtime.

Final Score: Pelicans 109, Wizards 105

The Wizards had another opportunity to win, but ended up losing again, in another blowout. They are going to need to make a lot of plays going forward if they want to finish near 10th place.

Key Performers: Cade Cunningham led all players with 32 points on 13/23 shooting.

Takeaways and look ahead: The Pelicans were the second-best team in the NBA at the end of this game. If they can maintain this level of play, they could be the third-best team in the Eastern Conference in the next week.