Anthony Davis Dominates San Antonio and Leads Pelicans into the Playoffs (VIDEO)

The New Orleans Pelicans are headed back to the postseason for the first time since 2011, having prevailed Wednesday night in their “war” against the visiting San Antonio Spurs 108-103.

Anthony Davis led the way for the eighth-seeded Pels, scoring a game-high 31 points, to along with 13 rebounds and three blocked shots.

The top-seed Golden State Warriors await the underdogs from New Orleans in a first round Playoff matchup tipping off Saturday afternoon.

Per the Times-Picayune:

A red-clad enthusiastic sellout crowd of 18,524 cheered at the Smoothie King Center. Star forward Anthony Davis and point guard Tyreke Evans embraced and shouted in joy. Forward Quincy Pondexter said he was on Cloud 9. [….] And Monty Williams looked relieved in reaching the postseason for the first time since he first took over as coach in 2010-11 when he still had All-Stars Chris Paul and David West.

 

“It’s a long time coming,” Williams said. “A month and a half ago, nobody thought we would be in this position. We just said we’re going to take it one game at a time. So many people counted us out, mathematically, all kinds of stuff. We got here, had to go through the Spurs, the defending champs.”

 

“We just stayed together,” Davis said. “We have been in tough situations all year. We’ve played tough games all year. We just knew what we had to do. […] I love him (Williams). He’s done a lot of this team. He takes a lot of criticism and he deals with it. He envisioned that we were going to make the playoffs. He told us three weeks ago when we were three games out and everybody counted us out that anything can happen. We came here tonight and got it done.”