Every NBA team’s greatest playoff moment

New Orleans Pelicans: Anthony Davis arrives (2015 Western Conference First Round)

There are certainly people that are going to be looking for the days of Chris Paul and the New Orleans Hornets when it comes to the now New Orleans Pelicans’ greatest playoff moment. However, that’s not where you’ll find it. Instead, it’s a moment that’s happened since the transformation to the Pelicans. Fittingly, it involves their superstar, Anthony Davis, in his first taste of playoff basketball.

Coming into the 2015 playoffs, the jury was still out to a degree about whether or not Davis was a viable superstar in the league. Though he carried a pretty questionable roster to the playoffs, they were still just a 45-win team and the No. 8 seed in the Western Conference. Thus, the questions were there over if Davis had actually arrived in the realm of the league’s stars just yet. But in a matchup where he and the Pelicans should’ve been overwhelmed, he proved that wasn’t the case.

New Orleans drew a matchup with the 67-win eventual-champion Golden State Warriors in the first round. Rather than cower in the face of adversity, though, Davis stepped up in the biggest way possible. In his first-ever playoff game, Davis was a monster as he racked up 35 points, seven rebounds and four blocks. He was far from a one-game wonder, though. Davis averaged 33.8 points, 11 rebounds, two assists, 1.3 steals and three blocks per contest over the four games.

Obviously the four games tells you that the series was a sweep in favor of Golden State. However, Davis made the Pelicans competitive in every game, with the largest margin of defeat being just 11 points. This against a team that won 22 more games than his in the regular season. Chris Paul was great in New Orleans, but the arrival of their next star was even more impressive and memorable.