The Los Angeles Lakers’ championship trek starts against the Portland Trail Blazers.
The Los Angeles Lakers are not getting a chance to ease into the NBA Playoffs. The Lakers are facing one of the most over-qualified eighth seeds in recent NBA history, the Portland Trail Blazers, without any sort of home-court advantage.
The two teams cannot be more opposite in terms of how they played in the eight seeding games as well. The Lakers went 3-5 in the seeding games and for the most part, were not taking the games fully seriously and were more worried about staying healthy and establishing rotations.
Meanwhile, the Portland Trail Blazers had to fight tooth and nail to get to the eighth seed in the Western Conference and then had to defeat the Memphis Grizzlies in a tough play-in game to even get into the NBA Playoffs.
While LeBron James and Anthony Davis have been taking it easy, Damian Lillard has been going off, being named the Bubble MVP in the process. That raises the question:
Should the Los Angeles Lakers be worried about the Portland Trail Blazers?
We answered that in the first episode of the brand new Lake Show Life podcast.
Some of the talking points and segments in the show include:
Staggerin’ Statistics:
Jason and Daniel both bring some “Staggerin’ Statistics” related to the first-round playoff matchup between the Lakers and the Blazers and are quizzing each other. One person gets the correct answer, one does not.
Is Damian Lillard this generation’s Kobe Bryant?
This is something that Jason explored in an earlier post on Lake Show Life and the two discuss in what ways Lillard and Kobe are similar and what ways they are different. Does Daniel agree with Jason’s take?
Purple and Gold Players of the series
Jason and Daniel both pick their “Purple and Gold Players” for this playoff matchup. A purple player is a role player on the other team that needs to do poorly for the Lakers to succeed (purple referencing getting banged up by the Lakers). A gold player is a role player on the Lakers that must step up for the Lakers to win.
Betting lines preview and predictions
Jason and Daniel preview the betting lines for Game 1 of the playoff series and give their picks in what will be a running series for the rest of the playoffs.
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