2. The Los Angeles Lakers are going to easily take out the other scoring options
Damian Lillard is going to do his thing. He is one of my personal favorite players in the league as he is one of the most exciting players to watch. His buzzer-beaters in the playoffs are a thing of beauty, particularly when he drained a deep three over Paul George in last year’s playoffs to essentially disband the Oklahoma City Thunder.
He is going to have good games and the Lakers do have the assets to slow him down, but that should not be the main focus. Containing Lillard is obviously key, but if they can effectively take out the other scoring options that Portland has then there is no way that the team could beat them in the series, let alone more than in just one fluke game.
The Lakers have the assets to take the secondary scorers out of the game and have proven to be successful in doing so.
The Lakers have great backcourt defense, led by Danny Green, that can do wonders in limiting CJ McCollum from having the impact that he should be having as a second perimeter scorer. Against the Lakers this season, McCollum is averaging just 17.3 points on just 35 percent shooting and 32 percent shooting from beyond the arc.
The team also has the defensive presence to limit Carmelo Anthony, who is not even the dynamic scorer that he once was. Anthony could easily be defended by LeBron as he does not really do much off-ball and the Lakers have Anthony Davis if they really need him.
If not on Carmelo, Davis will be trying to limit Whiteside, which should not be hard between Davis and JaVale McGee/Dwight Howard as Whiteside is not a premier scorer anyway.
However, if we do look at the one game that the Blazers beat the Lakers in this season it was the result of Whiteside (and Lillard) having massive games. Lillard dropped 48 and Whiteside added another 30. It took the second-highest scoring game of Whiteside’s season to beat the Lakers.
Limit that (which they will) and Portland simply cannot keep up.