Warriors: No. 8 seed Portland faces daunting task in first-round playoff matchup against Golden State.
Before they signed Kevin Durant, before they reached back-to-back NBA Finals, before they were bought by a Joe Lacob-led group of investors, the Warriors were unheralded, run-andgun upstarts trying to lift the franchise out of irrelevance.
With Baron Davis, Stephen Jackson and Jason Richardson leading the way, Golden State topped
Dallas in six games in 2007 to become the first No. 8 seed in NBA history to outlast a No. 1 seed in a seven-game set. It galvanized a long-suffering fan base and halted the club’s 15year drought without a playoffseries win.
“That was the loudest game I’ve ever heard as a player or broadcaster,” Warriors head coach Steve Kerr, who called the series for TNT, said of the decisive Game 6. “I’ve never heard a louder game than that.”
A decade removed from the “We Believe” hysteria, the topseeded Warriors enter Game 1 of their first-round matchup Sunday against eighth-seeded Portland as prohibitive favorites to capture their second NBA title in three seasons. It is the Trail Blazers, who went 0-4 in the regular season against Golden State, who are trying to overcome long odds for arguably the biggest upset in NBA history.
Only five No. 8 seeds have toppled No. 1 seeds since the league expanded the postseason to 16 teams in 1984. Outside of that 2006-07 Golden State squad, just two teams — the 2010-11 Grizzlies (who beat the Spurs) and the 2011-12 76ers (over the Bulls) — have won seven-game sets to reach the conference semifinals as the worst possible seed.
Though the talent divide between No. 1 and No. 8 seeds is always significant, few are as gigantic as the chasm separating the Warriors and Blazers. Golden State, the first team to post a third consecutive 65-win season, is one of four clubs in the past 40 years to rank in the NBA’s top two in both offensive and defensive efficiency. With a suspect defense and limited depth, Portland has the worst odds of the playoff teams, 300-1, to win the championship.
Per ESPN’s NBA Basketball Power Index, an analyticsbased system to measure team strength, the Blazers have a 1 percent chance of beating the Warriors in a seven-game series. That comes after Golden State swept Portland in the regular season by an average of 19.5 points.
The silver lining for the Blazers? They haven’t faced the Warriors since trading for center Jusuf Nurkic. A skilled 7-footer, Nurkic offers Portland the low-post presence it has long desired. His ability to feast in the paint and set textbook screens affords guards Damian Lillard and C.J. McCollum more room to operate.
Thanks largely to Nurkic, who landed in Portland in a Feb. 13 trade with Denver, the Blazers were the most improved team after the All-Star break. A Portland club that opened the season 24-35 went 14-5 in games the Bosnian big man started. Now, after missing the last seven regular-season games with a slight fracture in his right leg, Nurkic is listed as questionable for Game 1 against Golden State.
“I’d do the same thing,” Kerr said with a chuckle.
Because they don’t know whether Nurkic will be available, the Warriors have crafted two game plans: one for if he plays, and one for if he doesn’t. Portland’s slim chances of pushing the series to five, six or even seven games worsen without him. In that scenario, the Blazers would try to push the tempo and rely on three-point shooting — a risky blueprint against a team that boasts the league’s best offense and perimeter defense.
It only helps the Warriors that they have two players who understand what it takes for a No. 8 seed to stun a No. 1 seed in a seven-game series. Matt Barnes, who will miss Game 1 with a sprained right ankle, was an integral part of Golden State’s “We Believe” team. A Sixth Man of the Year candidate, Andre Iguodala helped Philadelphia upset the Bulls in 2012.
As for the rest of the Warriors’ roster? It features eight players who have played at least five NBA seasons, long enough to recognize that the teams upset in the first round are the ones that anticipated an easy series victory.
“We can’t expect to win because everyone else is expecting us to win,” Durant said. “Everyone on our team knows that.”