The Portland Trail Blazers are about to head into their first NBA Playoffs series in five years. When they take on the San Antonio Spurs tomorrow, it will be a new-ish experience for many Portland fans. Hopefully it will be the start of many such opportunities.<\/p>\n
Before the series begins, this question came to the Blazer\u2019s Edge Mailbag. I wanted to take a moment to respond to it for reasons you\u2019ll soon see.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m writing this for my 13 year old Tyler. He\u2019s a big Blazers fan and we often read your articles together. He asked me a question in the car yesterday that I want to pass on to you. He said he\u2019d like it if you could answer.<\/p>\n
He wants to know what\u2019s the difference in playoff basketball besides the format? You said the other day that playoff basketball is different. People including you often say that a team needs experience to succeed in the playoffs. Tyler asked what that means and what makes it so different?<\/p>\n
We\u2019d love it if you could answer! I know you\u2019re probably busy getting ready for the Spurs series but thank you for all you do!<\/p>\n
Hey Tyler! I\u2019m glad that you asked your dad to write! I learned about the Blazers through my dad too. Once when I was a kid I came downstairs and he was watching this cool thing where people bounced a ball and shot it through a hoop.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat is that?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cBasketball,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a sport people play. That\u2019s our team.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOur team? Do our family have a whole team?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d he said. \u201cThe team belongs to the city, to Portland. It belongs to all of us.\u201d<\/p>\n
That seemed like a neat concept, so I sat down and watched. I fell in love with the team and the game that day and it\u2019s never worn off. My dad also got me my first basketball and hoop. I did the same thing for my own son and taught him to shoot. I\u2019m so glad that you and your dad have moments like that too. It\u2019s super special. You won\u2019t forget it either! When you\u2019re old and gray you\u2019ll still remember talking ball with your dad.<\/p>\n
To answer your question, there are two big differences between playoffs basketball and the regular season.<\/p>\n
The first is quality of opponent. In the regular season, about half the teams you\u2019ll play are good, half bad. The really excellent ones come along every once in a while, not every day.<\/p>\n
In the playoffs, all opponents are good. If you advance even one round, you\u2019re probably going to run into a really excellent one right there! And they\u2019re not going away. Instead of playing a bad team, then an excellent one, then one in the middle, every game you play is against a really tough opponent.<\/p>\n
You can hide mistakes, off nights, and sometimes just being not-so-good at something during the regular season, switching opponents every night. In the playoffs there\u2019s nowhere to run or hide. If you\u2019re not good, you\u2019re going to lose quickly.<\/p>\n
The other major change is the amount of time the opponent has to prepare for you. It can be up to a week before the first game of a series starts. After that, you play more or less every other day for up to two weeks. During that whole span, the opponent has only one thing to think about: how to beat YOU.<\/p>\n
You\u2019re familiar with the concept of a Plan A, Plan B, and Plan C? If A, your first plan, doesn\u2019t work, you try Plan B. If B doesn\u2019t work, you try Plan C. If C doesn\u2019t work, you start praying.<\/p>\n
With all the time in the world to prepare for one opponent, playoffs teams are really good at taking away the other team\u2019s Plan A. That\u2019s the very first thing they plan for.<\/p>\n
This brings up one of the big realities of the postseasons. Teams with the HUGE stars\u2014those ultra-talented guys whose basketball rookie cards are worth fortunes\u2014have a big advantage. Think of Kevin Durant being able to shoot over anyone because he\u2019s 7-feet tall with the offensive skills of the best shooting guards. Or LeBron James with his basketball smarts and unstoppable physique. Or Steph Curry and his ability to hit three-pointers lightning quick from anywhere on the court (and six places off it). Those guys are a Plan A that cannot be stopped. If you can execute your Plan A at will and you can cut off the opponent\u2019s Plan A at the same time, you\u2019re probably going to win.<\/p>\n
If superstars aren\u2019t dominating the action\u2014or if two teams have equally-matched superstars\u2014then the team with the better Plan B usually wins. This can be because of better supporting talent, because of some team skill or characteristic that can\u2019t be overcome, or sometimes just because of experience. A team usually won\u2019t win every night with a Plan B, but they don\u2019t have to. Best-of-seven playoffs series are about averages. If you\u2019re better than the other guy, it\u2019ll show in the long run even if you lose a game or two.<\/p>\n
But here\u2019s the thing. By about Game 3 of the series, each team has made its best attempt at Plan A and at least one, if not both, have probably gone to Plan B too. But this is only the third game! There\u2019s at least one more left, maybe up to four!<\/p>\n
Teams adjust to each other between each game. What worked in Game 2 might get taken away in Game 3. And that will have to change in Game 4. So Plan C\u2019s and D\u2019s and E\u2019s and then circling back to A all happen in a long series. Teams with a lot of options in how to play\u2014either a deep team with great players or a team with multi-talented players who can adjust to different styles\u2014often have an edge in long playoffs series.<\/p>\n
During the regular season, teams only occasionally get forced into their Plan B. Nobody even thinks about Plan C much. By the time you\u2019d go to it, the game is already over and you\u2019re on to the next opponent, trying Plan A all over again in a different city. The playoffs require teams to dig deep, adjust constantly, and execute under a variety of circumstances with few mistakes through lots of different plans.<\/p>\n
If you make mistakes during the regular season, it doesn\u2019t hurt much. You lose a game maybe, but that\u2019s just 1 of 82. Or maybe your mistakes don\u2019t hurt you at all because the other team is so bad you win anyway. In the playoffs, 2-3 mistakes in the right quarter can cost you the game. And one game can cost you the series. So much more rides on every moment, every play. The tolerance for bad play is far lower than in your normal games. This puts a ton of pressure on everybody from players to coaches to referees, even.<\/p>\n
Put this all together and you\u2019ll understand the reason it\u2019s going to be hard for the Blazers to beat the Spurs in this series.<\/p>\n
First, San Antonio has one of those Plan A\u2019s that can\u2019t be stopped in Victor Wembanyama. He can do almost everything well. You can\u2019t take away one thing from him and say your job is done. He\u2019ll just beat you in a different way! Deni Avdija is good too, but he hasn\u2019t shown he\u2019s Wemby Good. The Spurs will have an easier team forcing the Blazers out of their Plan A than the Blazers will stopping the Spurs.<\/p>\n
Second, Portland\u2019s Plan B hasn\u2019t been that good. They haven\u2019t been healthy all season. They haven\u2019t had time playing together to develop a coherent Plan B. Usually their back-up plan is either to shoot a lot of threes and hope they go in or give the ball to a scorer and watch them try to score in isolation. Neither of those work very well\u2026at least not enough to last for seven competitive games. This is doubly true because San Antonio knows this and will be preparing for it.<\/p>\n
Third, the Blazers don\u2019t even have a definable Plan C. Most of their players have never been in the playoffs before. Those that have aren\u2019t the main guys on the team. The Blazers have potential depth going for them, but depth without direction doesn\u2019t mean much. They\u2019re going to need to prove they can execute in ways they haven\u2019t so far this season to make this a real series.<\/p>\n
But hey, there\u2019s always hope. And if hope fails, Portland\u2019s players will at least gain experience for next year, when they\u2019ll know better what they need to do to succeed in the playoffs.<\/p>\n
I hope that answered your question! Enjoy the games, Tyler! May your first real playoffs experience and the Blazers\u2019 first experience in a while both be great!<\/p>\n
And if you all want to send a question to the Mailbag, you can email it to blazersub@gmail.com and we\u2019ll try to answer as many as possible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Portland Trail Blazers are about to head into their first NBA Playoffs series in five years. When…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":616331,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,46315,51192,590,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-616330","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-blazers-analysis","11":"tag-blazers-mailbags","12":"tag-nba","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=616330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616330\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/616331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=616330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=616330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=616330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}