The good news for the Los Angeles Lakers is that they are the No. 1 seed in the playoffs of the Western Conference, the first time they have earned pole position in a decade and an honorable achievement after a traumatic season.
The bad news is that they seem to be the least valuable no. Won 1st seed in NBA history.
This whole escapade in Florida is a gigantic one-off, resulting in many unusual and unique circumstances. The evaporation of home court advantage is an unintended consequence that the Lakers could hit hardest.
Then there’s their sign that the Lakers landed a matchup with the Portland Trail Blazers in the first round after the NBA’s first play-in game to determine a playoff spot since 1956.
Winning three playoff series in the West is a daunting challenge for any team, given the depth in the conference at the moment, regardless of how the bracket arrived. But the Blazers playing with a hot Damian Lillard is by most accounts the least favorable outcome of any Lakers potential scenario that begins anew.
“[The Blazers] have defensive problems, which is one reason they are the 8-[seed] at the end of the day, “said one league scout. From a general point of view of talent and experience, they are probably a 4- or 5-seed that masks like an 8. “
One Eastern Conference coach said: “They’re just a team that scares you because of Lillard. If you’s the top seed, you do not like the idea of being scared in the first round.”
The Blazers are a veteran team with a lot of playoff experience – they were in the Western Conference finals last year – and they are mostly healthy, if not well rested. The Blazers were in ninth place when the season stopped in March in large part because two starters, Zach Collins and Jusuf Nurkic, had missed the entire season and they went 2-6 in games without Lillard.
Saw the extra time to get her big men healthy and Lillard took some rest without a doubt benefiting from Portland, which went 7-2 in Florida with Lillard averaging 36.9 points and was named the most valuable player of the part by the seeding games of the scheme.
It is possible, if the coronavirus pandemic never happened, that the Blazers would naturally have been in the playoffs with their game in March and April. Nurkic, who had 22 points and 21 handballs in winning the play-in game on Saturday, was close to a comeback when the league was stopped.
But in that case, Tuesday would have seen Game 1 take place at a high-energy Staples Center hosting its first Lakers playoff game in seven years. A potential Game 7 would have been there as well. Now, of course, every game is at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex.
The loss of home court could really be the most punishing for the Lakers in a possible showdown of the conference with the LA Clippers. In what would have been the NBA’s first hallway series, the Lakers looked to be handling a valuable advantage, because the very pro-Lakers crowd at Clippers games might have felt as if every game was a home game. .
Even not getting it to play on the go can be a disadvantage. The Lakers were the best road team in the NBA this season at 27-9, including a winning streak of 14 games at one point. One of the reasons is that they often enjoy great support along the way because of their large fan base.
LeBron James is one of the greatest achievements for road playoffs in league history. From 2010 to 2018, James won at least one roadgame in 25 consecutive playoff series, the longest such streak. He won two Road Game 7s in that span, the rarest of away wins, and often talks about how playing on the road in the off-season would bring out the best in him.
“I just love the opposition of the road,” James said during the 2017 playoffs. “I love playing more on the road than I like to play at home. It’s just a strange thing. I love the opposite, I love the LeBron slogans’ Tonight is not the night. I love the ‘Your overrated’ and all that stuff. I like everything. I do not know, man. It’s the mentality of the bunker to know that it’s 15 guys, plus the coaching staff and whoever is traveling with us against the whole state and the whole city. “
The loss of this kind of edge is what James has described several times as he went through the resurgence. He has admitted that he has difficulty getting into the necessary mentality and how unusual the environment in Florida has been. Playing for fans, friendly or rival, is something he has removed for almost two decades.
Winning a championship typically means significant setbacks, even for the best teams. But for this particular scenario, the Lakers will have to manage extra toughness.
“It’s a completely different situation than any other situation I’ve been in my career,” James said earlier this month. “I have zero experience with having the No. 1 seed inside a bubble … so this is all a learning experience for all of us.”
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