It’s too early in the season to call this a must win for the New Orleans Pelicans.

But it’s about as close to one as you can get just five games into an NBA season.

There are three winless teams remaining in the league.

Two of them will face each other Thursday night when the Pelicans (0-4) host the Sacramento Kings (0-4) at the Smoothie King Center. The Brooklyn Nets (0-4) are the other team still looking for their first win.

“We definitely have got to get this one,” said Pelicans’ center Derik Queen. “I’m not trying to  be too cocky, but I feel like we need this one desperately going into (the) Atlanta (game on Saturday).”

The Pelicans will be playing for the second straight night after trailing the Denver Nuggets from start to finish Wednesday in a 104-91 loss.

“Guys aren’t happy,” Pelicans’ coach Jamahl Mosley said. “I’m not happy. Nobody wants to be 0-4. And in that same breath, you understand that it’s part of our process of getting better. I get it. We all want to be undefeated for an entire NBA season. I would love to go 82-0. But you’ve got to learn the lessons within this.”

This is the second straight year the Pelicans have lost their first four games. Last season under Willie Green, they lost their first six games before beating the Charlotte Hornets in the seventh game.

Mosley understands the sense of urgency for Thursday’s game against the Kings.

“It’s high,” Mosley said. “It should be high. It should be high to want to go and take a game. … It’s not easy to win games in this league. There are 29 other teams that will tell you that it’s not easy to win game in this league. So you’ve got to find a way to go take a game. Not hope it happens. Not imagine it happens. You’ve got to go take a game. No one is going to let you walk in and take a game from them. You’ve got to go snatch the game. Figure it out.”

For the Pelicans, the biggest issue so far has been finishing games. That was the case in losses  to the Indiana Pacers, Utah Jazz and back-to-back losses to the Nuggets.  

“The three teams we lost to were focused and more disciplined and executed better than us,” Queen said. “We’ve got to turn that switch and have the level of focus that those teams had.”

 The Kings may be the perfect team to get the Pels back on track. The Pelicans have won eight of their last 12 games against the Kings.

“Once we put it together, it will be very special,” Mosley said. “It’s not going to be a straight line. It’s going to be up and down a little bit because that’s the way this thing goes. We have to make sure we are staying the course.”