The New Orleans Pelicans will host the Philadelphia 76ers at Smoothie King Center on Wednesday night.

The Pelicans, who will be without Zion Williamson for the season opener -- and a few more games -- due to injury, have one clear objective in their minds to start the season: reaching the playoffs for the first time since the 2017-18 season. The Pelicans ended last season with a 31-41 record and finished in 11th place of the Western Conference, but they were quite far from reaching a spot in the play-in tournament. Led by Williamson and Brandon Ingram, two of the league's most exciting young players, and after adding names such as Jonas Valanciunas and Devonte' Graham in the offseason, the Pelicans will be an entertaining team to watch, one that will score for fun and will play with a lot of pace. However, it remains to be seen if that intensity will translate to wins -- something that has been lacking at New Orleans of late.

The Sixers have been grabbing headlines over the last 24 hours, but it has been due to all the wrong reasons -- it mostly has to do with the handling of the Ben Simmons' situation that led to the star player being suspended for the season opener due to "conduct detrimental to the team." The Sixers finished last season with the best record in the Eastern Conference at 49-23, but that wasn't translated to the playoffs and they lost in the Eastern Conference Semifinals against the Atlanta Hawks. It remains to be seen if Doc Rivers' will repeat what they did during the regular season in 2020-21, but the team's focus right now is to improve what they did last year in the playoffs and get noticed by what they do on the hardwood, not what happens outside of the court.

These two teams played twice last season, and the head-to-head record ended tied at 1-1. However, the Sixers have won five of the last six against New Orleans.