The Portland Trail Blazers flew surprisingly clear by sweep against the New Orleans Pelicans from the playoffs. So what happens in Rip City – and what were the reasons for the clear bankruptcy? SPOX answers the most important questions.
The Blazers were the first team to say goodbye to this year’s playoffs – with a clarity no one had expected. In fact, the vast majority of experts – including all 22 ESPN analysts, as celebrated by the Pelicans on Twitter – had predicted that the blazers would win. A close one in most cases, because it was recognized that the matchup could be difficult for Portland, but still a victory.
It turned out completely differently. The Pelicans were not only difficult, they were an impossible matchup for Portland. In an impressive way they took the Blazers’ strengths and exploited their weaknesses mercilessly – for example Jusuf Nurkic became de facto unplayable because the Pelicans renounced a classic center and the Bosnian could not credibly defend either Nikola Mirotic or Anthony Davis. He was also offensively disappointing.
This was true for almost his entire team, but especially for Damian Lillard, who was sometimes completely kicked out of step by the Pelicans Defense (see question 2 for more). Game 1 was still a close affair, but afterwards the Pelicans implemented their game plan even more consistently and dominated the series almost at will.
Once the avalanche started, the blazers couldn’t stop them and early in the third game of the series it seemed as if their will was broken. In the fourth game they reared up again at the end, but at no point were they really close to winning.
The season ended much earlier than expected for 3-seed Portland, especially after the winning streak of 13 games in the Regular Season. The disappointment and confusion of the participants was correspondingly great. “We expected more from ourselves and unfortunately things went differently than we had hoped,” said Lillard after game 4.
Page 1: What happened?
How did the Pelicans pull out Damian Lillard’s tooth?
Page 3: How do you rate the season of blazers overall?
Page 4: What do the blazers do in the offseason?
Page 5: What happens to Jusuf Nurkic?