Considering the outstanding play of four-time All-Star Damian Lillard, fans can be forgiven for forgetting that the Blazers are no one-man team. True, he was the single biggest reason the Blazers upended the Thunder in the first round; he thoroughly outplayed former league Most Valuable Player Russell Westbrook throughout the five-game series. That said, the capacity of the conference third seeds to go deep in the postseason depends as much on the rest of their roster as on its acknowledged leader. In their current set-to against the Nuggets, for instance, the conscious effort to send multiple defenders his way compels the rest of the black and red to step up.
Against this backdrop, the Blazers wound up showing their worth yesterday. By all accounts, Lillard had a subpar outing; after scoring a whopping 39 points off 21 shots in Game One of their semifinal-round series, he found himself limited to 14 off 17. No matter, though, because he walked off with a win, anyway. And, for this, credit goes to teammates who coolly compensated for his off-night; for all his travails, he joined members of the starting lineup that all finished on the right side of plus-minus logs. Longtime backcourt partner C.J. McCollum got 20 off timely baskets. Late-season pickup Enes Kanter put up 15 and gave Nuggets stalwart Nikola Jokic fits on defense. Al-Farouq Aminu stayed constantly active on switch-all coverages. Even up-and-down Rodney Hood was an x-factor off the bench, getting 15 markers in 27 solid minutes of exposure.
That six Blazers ultimately claimed double figures in a winning score of 97 speaks volumes of their value in the grand scheme of things. Admittedly, they will go only so far as Lillard can take them; that’s simply the nature of competition in the superstar-driven National Basketball Association. Still, Game Two underscored that they have the requisite skill sets to execute head coach Terry Stotts’ plans and keep plodding on when things aren’t hunky dory. Yesterday, they could have easily folded in the fourth quarter, when the Nuggets came up with offensive rebound after offensive rebound — and 14 all told — to negate seemingly well-defended sequences. Instead, they hung tough and protected enough of their double-digit lead to ultimately prevail.
The Blazers now have homecourt advantage against the Nuggets, and they’ll be aiming to consolidate their road win with another at the Moda Center this weekend. They’re confident of doing so; not for nothing did they have the third-best regular-season home record in the league. They may not match the opposition in talent, but they have Lillard, and, perhaps more importantly, they have resolve. And, as the playoffs have so far highlighted, they’re good enough to ride on one or the other to prevail.
Anthony L. Cuaycong has been writing Courtside since BusinessWorld introduced a Sports section in 1994.
