And out come the Wolves: New Orleans Pelicans look rancid in 116-98 effortless loss to Minnesota

This recap that you aren’t reading — Because why would you want to relive that travesty? The “game” was pathetic. The effort was worse. And hey, the Saints have a playoff game Sunday afternoon. — could be solely this clip with the brief description, “The Pelicans are Jim Halpert. Trying to do the things necessary to win a basketball game is Michael Scott.”

There’s a reason Jim doesn’t want us to review this tape.

This “contest” started with a banked-in three-pointer from Jimmy Butler, and every loose ball then bounced perfectly for the Timberwolves for the entirety of the night, like a karaoke video bouncing orb spelling out every heart-felt belted out lyric to the entire Pat Benatar songbook sung from a middle-aged divorced woman with one foot on chair, one hand gripping a hot bottle of sake and the other wrapped around the mic with the reverb turned all the way up.

That’s not to say that the culprit in this game was the horseshoes smuggled in the buttocks of the Timberwolves’ players — though there were a few of those kinds of very lucky bounces — loose balls go to the team that plays with the most effort — or in this case, any effort. While most animals are cute when they are lazy, Pelicans are just infuriating when they, “can’t even.”

Here’s what that diarrhea casserole looks like.

If the Pelicans efforts on the glass and on defense were a major motion picture they would be, “Weekend at Bernie’s” — except it would be one living person trying to animate four dead bodies.

DeMarcus Cousins was the only player that had any significant effort for any significant stretch in this dark comedy.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Do you really want the blow by blow (emphasis on the blow by as the Wolves continually strolled through the Pels’ defense)?

Immediately following that Butler banked-in three, Jrue Holiday turns the ball over resulting in a Wiggins and-1 opportunity on the transition bucket. The turnover was completely unforced — he’d have two more early in the first of the same variety.

Unlike the Pelicans, Minnesota took advantage of their size, and Wiggins was pushing around Moore early on the block drawing double teams — one that resulted into a kick out to a wide open Karl-Anthony Towns for a three. In fairness, early on we did see some nice ball movement from New Orleans, but the perimeter shot would not fall for anyone.

Boogie was kind of keeping the Pelicans in the game early by getting fouled at the rim and converting the free throws — though the flatness we’ve seen so many times before kept looming over our heads like chemtrails in Alex Jones’ sky.

Any semblance of first quarter effort and ball movement was quickly eaten up and destroyed like 8mm film caught in the projector as the second quarter began. It was more of the same from the flat Pelicans — no one defended, no one chased rebounds, no one boxed out, turnovers continued, and I’m growing tired of watching teams kill us in the pick-and-roll while we rarely use the pick-and-roll in our own offense despite having one of the best roll men in the league.

The half would mercifully end — meaning we would get some respite from this completely emotionless basketball we were forcing ourselves to watch — with the Pelicans down 21 points while giving up 69 points to the Wolves. Giving up that many points in a half is getting as tired as the frat boys tweeting, “nice” every time it happens.

During the week leading up to this disaster, The Advocate’s Scott Kushner penned a scathing and accurate and fair take-down of this teams inability to give the fans of New Orleans what they deserve and to build any kind of real emotional connection with the city.

Let’s take a pause to check the pulse of the fan base.

Those that stuck around got into a more interesting and impassioned debate over who is to blame for the “performance” we were witnessing.

Do you want me to keep talking about the game? Because Gorgui Dieng — yeah, that Gorgui Deng — would hit two wide open corner threes. Anthony Davis would continue to settle for midrange contested jumpers instead of trying to drive to the rim. Darius Miller would eventually get going from deep and there was a brief moment of energy in a Boogie + bench lineup, but none of it would matter. The Pelicans had defecated the bed long ago and their was an empty #23 jersey sleep walking around the court like a tumbleweed of toilet paper covered in that defecation.

Meanwhile, despite being up by 30 for a substantial amount of time, Minnesota’s effort never wavered. You could still hear Tom Thibodeau barking from the sidelines — even picking up a technical foul when he though Cousins should have gotten an offensive 3-second call.

It was so disheartening that even the kindest members of Pelicans’ Twitter were digging deep from any positives to take away from the game.

However, even Andrew couldn’t remain positive.

I was invited to watch jello wrestling at a dive bar on St. Bernard Ave that sells frozen dark and stormys. Instead, I watched the game and wrote this. We all could have done better things with our evenings. Like Scott Kushner said — we deserve better.

Here’s some numbers for you, but they don’t matter. Just know that a severe lack of effort against an opponent the Pelicans have lost to twice before tonight in close heated battles was once again the reason this team lost another game — one there was no excuse for not being up for.

I can’t believe any of us made it this far. Hey Airline Drive, here’s our current mindset.