| 06 April 2011
About two hours before tipoff, Nate McMillan sat in his office and was asked about how he prepares Portland for the NBA postseason knowing how the last two first round playoff exits against Houston and Phoenix have gone.
“We have to have a calm state of mind,” McMillan explained after throwing out words like “hungry” and “mental challenge”.
Yet as the Blazers clinched another postseason run as the Sacramento Kings beat down the Houston Rockets, Portland did very little to prepare themselves mentally or even physically for the playoffs as the Golden State Warriors came out to play.
Calm state of mind, huh?
More like a complete mental lapse by a team poised for the first round.
“Tonight was bad,” McMillan started. “This is one of those games where we’ve got to put this behind us and get ourselves ready for Utah.”
The game plan for Golden State was simple enough: limit Portland’s second chance opportunities, get back in transition and jump out to an early lead. The Warriors were able to accomplish all three facets after the second half, namely because of something David Lee said at halftime to the rest of his Golden State teammates.
“At half the coaches and I were in our locker room talking about what adjustments we wanted for the second half and we heard through the door the players were talking about what they wanted to do,” explained Warriors head coach Keith Smart.
“David Lee said he wanted to guard Aldridge by himself. I’ve been dying for leadership from our team from someone to step up aside from the coaches.”
That third quarter is where Portland’s frustration took place as they shot 6-21 and were outscored 37-21.
“We’ve charted all the possessions alone that David has guarded Aldridge and he’s done a great job. We need to guard our own man and stay out of rotations, but helps with rebounding and contesting shots. If you trap every time, you are constantly in scramble mode. We wanted to force Aldridge off the block and get him out as high as we can. Now he won’t dribble and it’s a fade away jump shot. We will live with that. We just couldn’t give them multiple looks.”
Containing Aldridge – it is one postseason strategy Portland will have to deal with.
The other is having opposing teams pack the paint and force the Blazers into old stagnant jump shooting habits.
“We didn’t make shots. I think tonight was one of our worst nights shooting,” LaMarcus Aldridge said afterwards as both Rudy Fernandez and Brandon Roy combine to go 9-25 from the field.
“We had a lot of open looks, guys had open shots, and we just didn’t make them tonight. It was just one of those nights.”
One clank at a time is painful enough as the regular season draws to a close. That won’t fly come the playoffs and is clearly an area the Blazers will need to address come series time, regardless whom they face.
Even guys like Coach Smart, who will once again be watching the postseason from home, know what other teams need to do to get the best of Portland in the playoffs: limit second chance opportunities, get back in transition and jump out to an early lead.
“I know our game plan and what we needed to do and maybe another team will follow it. We didn’t secure those things early, but we were able to do that in the second half and make them play catch-up. Now when you get into a series and are going back and forth, you may have a bad game and then a good game the next one,” explained Smart.
“They are going to have a hard time getting easy baskets. I don’t know if they are going to struggle. They’ve hit their stride and they didn’t play well tonight at all. That was one of those things – Roy didn’t play well and Aldridge didn’t play well. It was a combination of things.”
The playoffs are always a different beast.
And while it’s easy to get caught up in the numbers in the loss to the Warriors – Aldridge pulling down his 33rd double-double of the season, the Blazers’ bench scoring 31 points, or even Portland being 12 games over .500 with still four games left in the regular season – the truth is, Portland can’t risk a mental let down of this caliber moving forward.
If so, come the postseason, the Blazers won’t be moving forward.
“They (Portland) will bounce back. Nate will have those guys ready to go,” Smart added.
“I don’t think they will struggle with certain aspects, because they won’t be shooting like they did tonight.”
photo: daylife
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