SACRAMENTO – Over his seven-year NBA career, Ryan Anderson has played about a half-dozen games in front of his hometown fans in Sacramento, but he’s rarely played well. In nearly every recent visit to California’s capital city, the elite perimeter shooter missed more than half of his shot attempts, seldom scoring in double figures. On Tuesday, with the New Orleans Pelicans needing a spark and a bounceback performance following Monday’s difficult loss at Portland, Anderson delivered his best hometown-return performance as a pro. More importantly, the sixth man helped New Orleans even its record at 1-1 on its week-long four-game road trip, with a second-half comeback to beat Sacramento.
Anderson’s game mirrored that of his team. He scored seven points in the first half, as New Orleans fell behind 54-45 at the break, but poured in 15 points (including three three-pointers) after intermission. Overall, Anderson finished with 22 points on 9-for-17 field-goal shooting. His previous high-scoring game in the River City was 19 points.
The Pelicans (6-4) used a 31-15 advantage in the third quarter to turn a nine-point halftime hole into a seven-point lead. Anderson nailed three straight three-pointers during the surge, while Anthony Davis (28 points, nine rebounds) contributed 10 points in the period, highlighted by three dunks. After a scoreless first half, Tyreke Evans registered 18 second-half points, including seven third-quarter points and several key late-game plays.
“Most of all, I��m just glad we got the win,” said Anderson, an avid Kings and Chris Webber fan as a kid. “This environment is so fun to play in; it brings back so many memories of being in the stands, watching games like this. To win a game like this, a tough game and a fighting game, it’s a great win for us. And it’s great to see my family and old friends here.”
Anderson acknowledged that a sluggish start made him wonder if he was in for a below-average night in the familiar Sleep Train Arena, but he found his shooting touch in the second half. After he drained a third consecutive trey, many Kings fans showed their displeasure with the home team not being able to prevent Anderson from launching open shots.
“There are some jitters coming back here,” Anderson said of playing in his home city. “It’s a situation where I need to come out and play the way I know how to play. Be aggressive, shoot and do whatever I can do to help this team. There was a stretch in the first half where I thought, ‘This might be another tough shooting game in Sacramento’… But I just continued to shoot the ball and played through it. Obviously you have family and so many people in the crowd distracting you. I tried to eliminate that in the second half and it helped a lot.”
Anderson, Davis, Evans and Eric Gordon (season-high 17 points) combined to score 57 of New Orleans’ 61 second-half points. The Pelicans had a few anxious moments in the final minutes, particularly when Sacramento cut its deficit to 98-94, but Evans scored on a driving layup and made another big shot to make it 102-97 with under a minute left. A subsequent Jrue Holiday steal and Davis free throw sent many of the 16,526 fans to the exits when it was 103-97 with 28 seconds remaining.
Twenty-four hours earlier, the Pelicans suffered their most frustrating loss of the young season, when Portland came back from a 15-point fourth-quarter deficit to prevail 102-93.
“To come out and bounce back against a very good team, in a tough place to play, it was a solid team win for us,” said Pelicans fifth-year coach Monty Williams, who did not have his starting center Omer Asik (lower back pain). “To do it without Omer, it says a lot about our mental toughness.”
“Last night, we learn from those type of games, having a lead like that on the road (and not holding it),” Evans said. “We’ve got to take care of the ball and execute on offense.”
Anderson: “This is a big defining win for us.”