The Sebastian Express wrote:Man. I'm just so eternally grateful for this team after watching everything else unfold. I think we need to take some things into perspective here.
Every single home team won game five.
Three of those were blowouts, but unlike us the other two had major expectations for this year and are more talented than us, especially with Nurk injured. In particular Boston which absolutely got dismantled by Milwaukee.
Houston, in prime position to take a 3-2 series lead heading back to Texas, somehow manages to lose game five in which Durant doesn't play. i think they still have a great shot to win the series, but man.. to lose this game is just. What a miss. I feel bad for their fans a bit.
We've had one truly bad game all playoffs. That's it. Just one. For a team missing it's second best player, a team that no one's expected anything from and most of us thought would lose terribly in the first round.
That's just amazing, especially stacked up against all the others here.
CJ was injured on Mar 16 and missed the next 11 games. Nurkic was injured on Mar 25. Since CJ's injury, the Blazer have gone 17-6 and 3 of those losses have come against a healthy Denver team. Portland went 15-3 thru the OKC series
yeah, some of that schedule was soft, but still, that kind of record to close the season and in the playoffs while missing the 2nd best player and the 3rd best for half the games is very impressive. It's a testament to the team's resiliency and cohesion. But more than that, it was a testament to the talent and leadership of Lillard. He carried the team, once again, over those 17 games until his shot of the century. Not only to HCA and to 3rd seed, but a 4-1 shellacking of a team that had dominated the regular season series. And in that time we've seen some truly memorable statements and quotes from him illustrating his character and leadership
which is why I get so sick of those who are trashing Lillard for his performance against Denver. I've even seen people say CJ is playing great (which isn't true) or Hood is playing great (which is true), and use the notion that somebody else on the team is doing well but Lillard isn't, so he's failing. It's friggin stupid. He's not a perfect machine that will always generate 32 points on high efficiency. And once again we're seeing an opponent sell out their defense to stop Dame...and it's working. That's not Dame's fault. Some of the fault is Nurk's injury; some of it is due to Dame being tired, IMO; and some of it is simply because Portland still doesn't have a singular alternative talent alongside Dame to force a team to adjust their defense
I'm not real optimistic about tonight's game. Denver has all the momentum and they are executing their game plan well. I expect Portland to be intense to start the game and play well in stretches, but I question if they can sustain good play. They couldn't in game 4. They have no margin of error and one-armed Kanter with Zach isn't enough to counter the paint dominance of Jolic and Millsap But who knows, win tonight and anything can happen in game 7.
