Blazers Look To Silence Thunder In ‘Rip City’

Before the start of the first round NBA playoff series between Portland and Oklahoma City we suggested that the collective zeitgeist wasn’t giving the Blazers due respect. Oklahoma City was the only lower seeded team favored to win their first round series. Portland had home court advantage and the ‘Rose City’ has always been a nasty place for opposing teams to play dating back to Clyde Drexler and Terry Porter at Memorial Coliseum. They play at the Moda Center now but only one team in the West (Denver) and another in the East (Milwaukee) had a better home record. The Blazers had played well down the stretch in the regular season and although there had been questions about the health of CJ McCollum’s knee he was ready to go when the playoffs began. Otherwise, with the exception of Portland’s monstrous Bosnian center Jusuf Nurkic who suffered a nasty ankle injury in late March they were healthy.

Oklahoma City might have been one of the teams not giving them due respect. Now the Thunder are 48 minutes from watching the rest of the NBA playoffs on television. The Thunder did win Game 3 at home but otherwise they’ve been completely outclassed and outworked by the Blazers. Portland is all of a sudden ‘trendy’ finally the sports media is realizing just how good the Blazers’ backcourt of McCollum and Damian Lillard really are. Former LA Lakers great Byron Scott recently compared the duo to Detroit legends Isiah Thomas and Joe Dumars. The question that begs itself is ‘why didn’t anyone notice this *before* the playoffs?’

The Blazers still have to take care of business on their home court but there’s every reason to think that they will. When leading 3-1 Portland has a series record of 6-0 all time. When trailing a series 1-3 OKC has a series record of 0-5 and extended the series past Game 5 only once. As we’ve noted throughout, the Blazers are nasty at home–they’re now 6-2 SU/ATS against the Thunder at the Moda Center. Perhaps this most impressive thing about the Blazers’ performance during this series has been the way that they’ve clamped down defensively–the Thunder shot 39.8% in Game 1, 40.7% in Game 2 and 37.5% in Game 4.

OKC still has a shot but they’ve not really shown anything that would suggest a turnaround is in order. Everyone knows that teams down 0-3 are in dire straits and particularly in the NBA. What isn’t as widely known is that teams down 1-3 playing Game 5 on the opponent’s home court aren’t in much better shape. Teams in this situation have gone on to win the series only 6 teams in 153 opportunities combined in baseball, hockey and basketball. In the NBA, It’s happened only twice in 75 situations giving the team down 1-3 a 2.7% winning percentage. It’s never happened in the first round of the NBA playoffs where teams down 1-3 playing Game 5 on the road are 0-20 in the series.

The Game 5 record isn’t much better. Across all sports, teams down 1-3 playing Game 5 on enemy turf are 48-105 (31.4%) straight up in that game. In first rounds in all sports, they’re 13-31 (29.5%). In the NBA, the team down 1-3 is 21-54 (28%) straight up in Game 5 and 3-17 (15%) SU in the first round. Even with the Blazers’ strong showing in the series so far they may still not be getting the respect they deserve. The current NBA betting line on this game has the Blazers as a -3.5 favorite which suggests that these teams are dead even on a ‘neutral court’. During this series at least, Portland has looked to be significantly better.

BET PORTLAND TRAILBLAZERS -3.5 OVER OKLAHOMA CITY THUNDER

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