If experience is the best teacher, it's only natural that the Trail Blazers might feel a whole lot smarter this season after getting schooled by the Spurs in the playoffs. There had been the euphoria of Damian Lillard's 0.9-second dagger that finished off the Rockets in the first round to give Portland its first playoff series win nearly 1 1/2 decades.
That jubilation was still echoing off the walls when the Spurs began pounding out a steady drumbeat of advanced lessons. On defense. On commitment. As much as anything, on the need for a deeper, stronger bench.
For while the Blazers rode a wave of extraordinary good health -- four of their five starters played all 82 regular games; just two different starting lineups all season, the fewest ever -- they didn't have enough answers in reserve when the Spurs tossed out tougher questions.
"They showed us the brand of basketball you got to play to be a champion and to be success deep in the playoffs," Lillard said. "They play the basketball that we want to play eventually. I think the way they did it to us is what hurt the most and we got to take it as a lesson and come back better and I think we've done that."
Now though while the Blazers are back looking very much the same, they're also different in demeanor and mindset as they return to Houston on Monday night for the first time since that epic first-round series last spring that included three overtime games in addition to Lillard's one-point clincher and cumulative razor's final score of 672-670.
"Haven't thought about it," said power forward LaMarcus Aldridge. "It's another night for us...Whenever you win your first series or a series, there's always happy memories. But those are behind us now. It's time to start some new ones."
Bigger, more ambitious ones that were fueled more by defeat at the hands of the Spurs than beating the Rockets. The Spurs won four games by an average of 20 points.
