Alvin Gentry has declared this a crucial week for the Pelicans, and that might be an understatement. New Orleans is five games behind the Nuggets for the final playoff spot in the West, with four teams blocking their near-extinct bid for the playoffs.

“We’ve just got to win games,” Gentry told reporters. “We’re in a situation now where it doesn’t matter, there’s no reason to look at the standings. For us, we have to win games, that’s the bottom line. We have (15) games left, and we can’t afford to lose any of them. Even that doesn’t guarantee you are getting into the playoffs.”

In the larger sense, though, this might be a crucial week for Gentry’s tenure in New Orleans. A league source told Sporting News that though no definite decision has been made on the future of the tandem of Gentry and general manager Dell Demps with the Pelicans, failure to secure that playoff spot (which has been all but lost) or at least to show “significant progress with this roster as it stands” likely will move the Pelicans to oust Gentry. Demps is more likely to stay, but that’s not a certainty, either.

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“There’s some feeling in the front office the record being what it is, the writing is on the wall,” the source said. “Might as well make a change in April and start searching. But is that really fair? Can’t you give Dell an offseason to get some shooters, give Alvin some time to remake the offense? They’ve at least got to give this playoff spot a run and that might buy more time. That’s sort of where it stands.”

The glimmer of hope there for Gentry and Demps is that they’re not looking at a playoffs-or-bust scenario, and with good reason. There must be some leeway granted for the difficulty that has come with upending the team at the trade deadline by bringing in talented, volatile center DeMarcus Cousins to pair with star Anthony Davis inside. In nine games with the Pelicans, Cousins has had a difficult entry period, averaging 20.9 points and 42.1 percent shooting (down from 27.8 points and 45.1 percent shooting in Sacramento).

One issue in replacing Gentry could be the lack of top candidates on the coaching market now. Gentry has one more year on this contract, worth around $3.3 million, and hasn’t really gotten a chance to coach a full, healthy Pelicans team. If the Pelicans were to make a change, speculation is that the team would prefer to bring in a combination team president/coach. There are few coaches on the market who would warrant a dual job, though.

It’s still Gentry’s job for now. He has the difficult task of building a twin-tower offense around Cousins and Davis on the fly, which is a near-opposite of the up-tempo style of play that Gentry was brought to New Orleans to implement.

The Pelicans, already a subpar 3-point shooting team before the trade that sent away guard Buddy Hield, have shot 31.6 percent on 3-pointers since the Cousins deal. That’s left very little space for Cousins and Davis to operate, and little ability for Gentry to diversify the offense.

There’s been some semblance of hope cropping up in the past two weeks. The Pelicans are 4-3 in March, and the three losses were in overtime to the Spurs, plus tight losses to Utah and Toronto. On Tuesday, they had their second blowout win of the Cousins Era, beating Portland 100-77. That’s the third time this month they held an opponent under 90 points, something they’d done only four times in the first four months of the year.

Gentry spent most of the past two seasons trying to make the Pelicans one of the league’s fastest teams. Now he’s hit the brakes, and the Pelicans are playing slower. The team and its opponents were averaging a combined 176.1 field-goal attempts per game before the trade, but that’s down to 171.1 per game since. They’re maintaining some tempo, but the Pelicans are more deliberate on both ends now.

But that might not be enough to lead to a strong finish for a team that was so deep in a hole. Gentry is 57-92 through nearly two seasons with the Pelicans, a tenure cut low by injuries and a mismatched roster. Demps was fortunate enough to land Cousins for a relatively cheap price, but after overseeing the snakebitten 2011 departure of Chris Paul, he’s gotten New Orleans to just one postseason appearance in his past five seasons.

Injuries and roster upheaval are legitimate reasons for the Pels’ failures, but wins and losses ultimately force decisions. For Gentry and Demps, there’s a dwindling number of games remaining to push those decisions back in their favor — and to hang onto their jobs.