Game Thread PLAYOFFS - ROUND 2, GAME 1: Blazers @ Warriors - 5/1/16, Sunday, 12:30 (PDT), ABC

[espn_hall_of_famer]

2015-16 REGULAR SEASON RECORD
PORTLAND TRAIL BLAZERS
44 - 38
(16-25 Road)
GOLDEN STATE WARRIORS
73 - 9
(39-2 Home)




_____________________________
---------PROBABLE STARTERS---------

PG

DAMIAN LILLARD VS SHAUN LIVINGSTON

SG

C.J. McCOLLUM VS KLAY THOMPSON

SF

MAURICE HARKLESS VS HARRISON BARNES

PF

AL-FAROUQ AMINU VS DRAYMOND GREEN

C

MASON PLUMLEE VS ANDREW BOGUT


------------------------------------------------------




WHEN: 12:30 PM, SUNDAY, 5/1/2016

WHERE: ORACLE ARENA, OAKLAND, CA

TV BROADCAST:

RADIO BROADCAST:

​

------------------------------------------------------



--------------BENCH--------------
PORTLAND TRAIL BLAZERS

ROBERTS , HENDERSON , CRABBE , MONTERO

CONNAUGHTON , VONLEH , DAVIS , KAMAN

GOLDEN STATE WARRIORS

CLARK , BARBOSA , RUSH , IGUODALA

McADOO , SPEIGHTS , EZELI , VAREJAO

INJURIES
TRAIL BLAZERS
Meyers Leonard (dislocated left shoulder): OUT
WARRIORS
Stephen Curry (MCL sprain, right knee): OUT
Kevon Looney (left hip surgery): OUT



HEAD COACHES

- VS –

TERRY STOTTS --- STEVE KERR



WARRIORS' OFFICIAL GAME NOTES
BLAZERS' OFFICIAL GAME NOTES ​

PLAYOFF SERIES NOTES
• This will be the first ever meeting between the Trail Blazers and Warriors in the NBA Playoffs. Golden State is one of two Western Conference teams that Portland has never matched up against in the postseason (New Orleans). Each of Portland’s last three playoff series have come against team’s it has never faced in the postseason (Memphis, Los Angeles).

• Since Portland became a franchise in 1970, Portland has made the playoffs 32 times, while Golden State has qualifi ed 16 times. The two teams have both reached the playoffs in the same year in nine of those seasons.

• The Trail Blazers are advancing to the Western Conference Semifinals for the second time in the past three seasons (11th time overall).

• By earning the fifth seed, the Trail Blazers have finished in the top-5 in the Western Conference in three consecutive seasons for the first time since doing so in four straight seasons from 1989-90 to 1992-93.

• In NBA postseason history, teams that lost the regular-season series versus their playoff opponent are 158-387 in those postseason series (entering the 2016 NBA Playoffs). Portland defeated the Clippers 4-2 despite dropping three of four regular season games.


CONNECTIONS
• Golden State head coach Steve Kerr finished first in voting for the 2016 NBA Coach of the Year, while Portland’s Terry Stotts fi nished as the NBA’s runner-up.

• Warriors head coach Steve Kerr played one season for the Trail Blazers during the 2001-02 campaign.

• Warriors guard Klay Thompson is the son of former Trail Blazer Mychal Thompson, who the Trail Blazers selected fi rst overall in the 1978 NBA Draft. Thompson played seven years in Portland (1978-86).

• Golden State assistant coach Luke Walton is the son of Bill Walton, who was a member of Portland’s 1976-77 NBA Championship team. Bill Walton spent his first four NBA seasons with the Trail Blazers from 1974-75 to 1977-78.

REGULAR SEASON SERIES

​

Don't see a game thread yet. I thought I'd go ahead and share some advanced analytics on this forum since I did them and this is a group that would actually appreciate it.

One thing top handicappers do is take something that can be measured in quantity, but has a similar set of circumstances per occurrences. In basketball, that would looks something like not trying to look at the 4 individual W's and L's between two teams that have met 4 times in the last 6 months, but instead look at the 200 possessions by Team A's offense vs. Team B's defense and vice-versa, then extrapolate R-squared regression probability curves from each of those outcomes when played out thousands of times over. I was doing a bit of this for GS vs. Portland because one fortunate thing you can do with it is see who GS will match up in situations in which they DIDN'T have Curry and how that loss of one person was impacting the average outcomes of each possession on each side of the floor.

So while the data is clearly going to be smaller without Curry vs. Portland and thus creates a bit larger range of possible error, it still was the equivalent of 1.5 games in total minutes worth of sample size to extrapolate. Here's what it shows.

In away games in Oakland, Portland was on average 5.5 pts worse than GS without Curry on the floor per game. That could be extrapolated to around -10 pts per 48 minute session. Thus you would look for a spread outside of GS favored between 5-10 in games 1 & 2 and jump on the one that's the other direction.

In home games at the Moda Center, Portland was on average 8 pts better without Curry on the floor per game, and extrapolated out to a 48 minute game, could be as high as a +13 pt favorite over GS when playing at home. So the spread in theory would be somewhere between 8-13 in Portland's favor, if the spread falls outside of that in Nevada, you jump on the it would fall. In this case likely it will be a pick-em or close to no spread when GS plays in Portland w/o GS, but we'll have to wait until Game 3 to see for sure, and we'll have much more game 1 and game 2 data to dive into by then.

In total, the good news for Blazers fans is that all of this adds up to a close match-up if Steph were to never return from injury in the series. And through just the first 4 games, assumin Steph doesn't come back within those games, the average math works out at Portland as a +1.1 pts per game using all samples combined and playing 4 games with 2 on each others' courts. So if Steph doesn't come back for games 1-4, we can plan on this being one hell of a nail biter when using some advanced handicapping analytics.

 

[SlyPokerDog]

Hey thanks for that! That was interesting.

 

[WillG]

Thanks for sharing!
Insightful.

 

[JfizzleBlazer]

Nice info. But someone take this down! Only @Darkwebs gets to make the official gamethreads!

 

[42N8Bounce]

Nice pic from Alexander's Twitter -

Vonleh's massive hands are palming Alexander's and Montero's heads.

Pretty impressive they got all 15 guys in the shot.

 

[BigGameDamian]

Nice pic from Alexander's Twitter -

Vonleh's massive hands are palming Alexander's and Montero's heads.

Pretty impressive they got all 15 guys in the shot.

Who took the snap?

 

[BigGameDamian]

Nice pic from Alexander's Twitter -

Vonleh's massive hands are palming Alexander's and Montero's heads.

Pretty impressive they got all 15 guys in the shot.

Is that Mo Harkless gang sign?

 

[HomerLovesKoolAid]

Close this bad juju thread immediately, ban the espn guy, and formally apologize to darkwebs before we lose this series.

 

[Eastoff]

Is that Mo Harkless gang sign?

Yes, 'I love you'. Straight out of NYC

 

[THE HCP]

Damn who is this sausage that created this thread? Shut this bitch down and have the expert make one, or DarkWingDuck!

 

[PDXFonz]

For those who don't know - HOF is an ESPN blazer board legend, and I know he didn't mean to step on any toes.

Great post HOF. I think that the Warriors fans are underrating the Blazers because they perceive our first round opponent to be weak (which is funny since they played the Rockets).

As the Rockets learned in the first round - the Warriors are a deep team capable of winning without their star player. It is going to take a collective team effort if we want to advance past this series. I think the determining factor is going to be the play coming from Green/Aminu. Green seems to get a lot of open 3 pointers because of mismatches against taller 4's in the league (similar to how the Clippers left Aminu open so often), while Aminu will be ready to contest his shots off of screens. Many Warrior fans don't know it, or refuse to admit it, but the Blazers from a match-up perspective are actually more difficult for them than the Clippers. The reason I say this is because of similar play styles between the two teams, but more specifically the similarity between players of the same position.

Lets assume both rosters

Curry - CP3 (Basically Dame/CP3 except Curry is ahead in development)
Thompson - Reddick (Advantage GSW due to the height and athleticism of Thompson)
Barnes - M'bah a Moute (In my book somewhat of a wash depending on the night. Moute a great defender, Barnes great on offense. One night Barnes might be hitting, the next he can't get space and is forced to make the pass)
Green - Griffin (much like our series this is Griffin if he's 100%. Green shot 38% from three, compared to Aminu's 36%, which is where either team would do their damage against a fully healthy Griffin. That 2% difference is highly negligible in my book)
Bogut - Jordan (Could Bogut jump high enough, often enough to contend with DJ on >50% of the boards?)

Now lets look at our match-up with the Warriors and how I see each shaping up.

Curry - Dame (Coin toss. I feel its quite possible that Curry attempts to out score Dame, while Dame looks to get it done Vs. Curry on the defensive end, which means Advantage Lillard.)
Thompson - CJ (Advantage GSW. Thomphson has a significant height advantage over CJ which could pose problems on both offense and defense. However I would never completely rule CJ out of any matchup. Don't forget CJ played many minutes against a taller Mbah a Moute; 6'8 vs Thompson at 6'7)
Barnes - Harkless (Coin toss. Harkless is much more of a factor on the offense end than Mbah a Moute. The more you make your opponent work on defense, the tougher it will be for them to find their offense. Harkless is also no spring chicken on the defensive end, he will be ready to score, but without depleting his energy. Harkless will be ready to hedge screens and stay with Barnes on defense)
Green - Aminu (WILD CARD!!!! Aminu actually has a slight height advantage over Green. But he doesn't have a lot of experience guarding a PF who plays that role the way Draymond does. If we had made it past a 100% Griffin Clipper squad then Aminu would be more than ready for this matchup, however as it is I wouldn't be surprised to see Draymond get the better of this. Still it could go either way as both players are not necessarily used to playing a 'mirror match')
Plumlee - Bogut (Can Bogut jump high enough, often enough to contend with Plumlee on >50% of the boards?)

I really think it's going to be an interesting series. But regardless of what happens, this season will be looked upon as a success. And if for no reason other than that I say GO BLAZERS!!!

 

[HomerLovesKoolAid]

If we're going to have a game thread this lame we might as well just let HCP do it.

 

[BlayZa]

peep the sig

all post season wins going up.

 

[Darkwebs]

2015-16 REGULAR SEASON RECORD
PORTLAND TRAIL BLAZERS
44 - 38
(16-25 Road)
GOLDEN STATE WARRIORS
73 - 9
(39-2 Home)




_____________________________
---------PROBABLE STARTERS---------

PG

DAMIAN LILLARD VS SHAUN LIVINGSTON

SG

C.J. McCOLLUM VS KLAY THOMPSON

SF

MAURICE HARKLESS VS HARRISON BARNES

PF

AL-FAROUQ AMINU VS DRAYMOND GREEN

C

MASON PLUMLEE VS ANDREW BOGUT


------------------------------------------------------




WHEN: 12:30 PM, SUNDAY, 5/1/2016

WHERE: ORACLE ARENA, OAKLAND, CA

TV BROADCAST:

RADIO BROADCAST:

​

------------------------------------------------------



--------------BENCH--------------
PORTLAND TRAIL BLAZERS

ROBERTS , HENDERSON , CRABBE , MONTERO

CONNAUGHTON , VONLEH , DAVIS , KAMAN

GOLDEN STATE WARRIORS

CLARK , BARBOSA , RUSH , IGUODALA

McADOO , SPEIGHTS , EZELI , VAREJAO

INJURIES
TRAIL BLAZERS
Meyers Leonard (dislocated left shoulder): OUT
WARRIORS
Stephen Curry (MCL sprain, right knee): OUT
Kevon Looney (left hip surgery): OUT



HEAD COACHES

- VS –

TERRY STOTTS --- STEVE KERR



WARRIORS' OFFICIAL GAME NOTES
BLAZERS' OFFICIAL GAME NOTES ​

PLAYOFF SERIES NOTES
• This will be the first ever meeting between the Trail Blazers and Warriors in the NBA Playoffs. Golden State is one of two Western Conference teams that Portland has never matched up against in the postseason (New Orleans). Each of Portland’s last three playoff series have come against team’s it has never faced in the postseason (Memphis, Los Angeles).

• Since Portland became a franchise in 1970, Portland has made the playoffs 32 times, while Golden State has qualifi ed 16 times. The two teams have both reached the playoffs in the same year in nine of those seasons.

• The Trail Blazers are advancing to the Western Conference Semifinals for the second time in the past three seasons (11th time overall).

• By earning the fifth seed, the Trail Blazers have finished in the top-5 in the Western Conference in three consecutive seasons for the first time since doing so in four straight seasons from 1989-90 to 1992-93.

• In NBA postseason history, teams that lost the regular-season series versus their playoff opponent are 158-387 in those postseason series (entering the 2016 NBA Playoffs). Portland defeated the Clippers 4-2 despite dropping three of four regular season games.


CONNECTIONS
• Golden State head coach Steve Kerr finished first in voting for the 2016 NBA Coach of the Year, while Portland’s Terry Stotts fi nished as the NBA’s runner-up.

• Warriors head coach Steve Kerr played one season for the Trail Blazers during the 2001-02 campaign.

• Warriors guard Klay Thompson is the son of former Trail Blazer Mychal Thompson, who the Trail Blazers selected fi rst overall in the 1978 NBA Draft. Thompson played seven years in Portland (1978-86).

• Golden State assistant coach Luke Walton is the son of Bill Walton, who was a member of Portland’s 1976-77 NBA Championship team. Bill Walton spent his first four NBA seasons with the Trail Blazers from 1974-75 to 1977-78.

REGULAR SEASON SERIES

​

 

[Strenuus]

^ This needs to be the OP.

 

[kjironman1]

That HOF post was very informative but like many others on here i am a little superstitious in the way things go and this thread is taking me out of my comfort zone. I really don't know much about "extrapolating R-squared regression probability curves from each of those outcomes when played out thousands of times".... What i do know is the Warriors won 73 games this year and the Blazers have a very tough task in front of them, with or without Curry.

My biggest problem with the game today has nothing at all to do with advanced analytics and really doesn't touch on rosters. My biggest problem is the 36 hour turn around to a Playoff Game! ABC and TNT had two first series games to televise today. there was absolutely no reason other than Sunday revenue to push this game into the mix so fast. What are they thinking here? Yesterday the NBA seemed to be just fine with a single game BLOWOUT between the Spurs and Thunder and now they have to pack 3 games into Sunday and put the Blazers as close to a B2B as physically possible without actually doing it. At Midnight Friday night i was still in my car driving home from a closeout game. The team obviously was not home in their beds either. The only good thing about this is the break they will get between games 2 and 3 which actually works in the Warriors favor as they are looking to get Curry back. But by that time Portland will have Played both road games and a closeout game over the course of 5 days Friday - Tuesday and the Warriors have been sitting since last Wednesday's drubbing of the Rockets. There is absolutely no reason for pushing this game into the Sunday slot. $$$$ rules and is the Root of all Blazer evil!

Looking at the way the schedule is playing out i have some worries about the way things will go today. The Blazers will have to try to continue moving and adjusting. GS was the originator of the Blanket theory teams have been using on the Blazers. They will do almost exactly the same thing the Clippers did. They will trap and double Dame and make someone else make a shot. They will also keep the ball out of CJ's hands so the alternative again will be Plumlee and Aminu. Plumlee could again have a monster game as the Warriors do not have a guy like Jordan in the middle and if they start to cheat we could see Harkless get lots of huge dunks. I do not like the idea of Aminu shooting 3's with so little time off and coming off such an emotional win. I would prefer seeing him driving and finding a man but we all know as soon as he starts driving the ball has a mind of it's own.

To use a Kingspeed quote "They can't guard us" would be a little over the top but there are ways the Blazers have the advantage on offense. The problem is that there are more ways the Warriors have and advantage against every defense they play. The key on this game is to employ the same Blanket theory on Livingston. Take him out and keep the ball out of Thompson's hands off the pick and you make them turn to Barnes and Green. Of course getting Green flustered is always a good thing. Not sure what is going on but Green is shooting way down at 52% from the free throw line? He is typically 70% or better but he is not hitting free throws to this point. Foul him a bit and see what happens. The very worse case scenario is he gets mad at something.

I am going with a big game from Plumlee and some nifty moves by Harkless as the key to tonight's game. It's almost the same line as we went in the last series. If the supporting cast of the Blazers are playing well and making plays on both Offense and Defense the Blazers can stay in this game. If not it's going to be over quick. Just remember it's only one game of the series no matter what happens.
Kjironman is a fan!!!

 

[Denny Crane]

 

[Sedatedfork]

@kjironman1 while a 36 hour turnaround is probably bad, the blazers are 4-0 in their last 4 games. I think that bodes well for them. It is a young team and they should play loose.

 

[kjironman1]

@kjironman1 while a 36 hour turnaround is probably bad, the blazers are 4-0 in their last 4 games. I think that bodes well for them. It is a young team and they should play loose.

Lets hope you are right.

 

[BBert]

Damn who is this sausage that created this thread? Shut this bitch down and have the expert make one, or DarkWingDuck!

DarkWing's threads have won us four straight playoff games. It makes me nervous messing with that kind of success.

 

[BBert]

Making the Blazers play this game today at noon so soon after the series they just went through is straight up bullshit.

Hopefully this young Blazers team doesn't have an emotional or mental let down.

If Harkless hits threes like he did Friday and Aminu removes his head from his ass I still like our chances.

What can I say, I'm a fanatic.

 

[SlyPokerDog]

I combined Dark and ESPN's posts.

 

[BBert]

If we lose its on your head, Dogg!

 

[BlazerDuckSeahawkFan94]

If we lose its on your head, Dogg!

Off with the foul beasts head!

 

[PDXFonz]

DarkWing's threads have won us four straight playoff games. It makes me nervous messing with that kind of success.

And here I was thinking it was my prediction!

 

[kjironman1]

If we lose its on your head, Dogg!

But save the hat?

 

[blazerboy30]

2015-16 REGULAR SEASON RECORD
PORTLAND TRAIL BLAZERS
44 - 38
(16-25 Road)
GOLDEN STATE WARRIORS
73 - 9
(39-2 Home)




_____________________________
---------PROBABLE STARTERS---------

PG

DAMIAN LILLARD VS SHAUN LIVINGSTON

SG

C.J. McCOLLUM VS KLAY THOMPSON

SF

MAURICE HARKLESS VS HARRISON BARNES

PF

AL-FAROUQ AMINU VS DRAYMOND GREEN

C

MASON PLUMLEE VS ANDREW BOGUT


------------------------------------------------------




WHEN: 12:30 PM, SUNDAY, 5/1/2016

WHERE: ORACLE ARENA, OAKLAND, CA

TV BROADCAST:

RADIO BROADCAST:

​

------------------------------------------------------



--------------BENCH--------------
PORTLAND TRAIL BLAZERS

ROBERTS , HENDERSON , CRABBE , MONTERO

CONNAUGHTON , VONLEH , DAVIS , KAMAN

GOLDEN STATE WARRIORS

CLARK , BARBOSA , RUSH , IGUODALA

McADOO , SPEIGHTS , EZELI , VAREJAO

INJURIES
TRAIL BLAZERS
Meyers Leonard (dislocated left shoulder): OUT
WARRIORS
Stephen Curry (MCL sprain, right knee): OUT
Kevon Looney (left hip surgery): OUT



HEAD COACHES

- VS –

TERRY STOTTS --- STEVE KERR



WARRIORS' OFFICIAL GAME NOTES
BLAZERS' OFFICIAL GAME NOTES ​

REGULAR SEASON SERIES

​

Don't see a game thread yet. I thought I'd go ahead and share some advanced analytics on this forum since I did them and this is a group that would actually appreciate it.

One thing top handicappers do is take something that can be measured in quantity, but has a similar set of circumstances per occurrences. In basketball, that would looks something like not trying to look at the 4 individual W's and L's between two teams that have met 4 times in the last 6 months, but instead look at the 200 possessions by Team A's offense vs. Team B's defense and vice-versa, then extrapolate R-squared regression probability curves from each of those outcomes when played out thousands of times over. I was doing a bit of this for GS vs. Portland because one fortunate thing you can do with it is see who GS will match up in situations in which they DIDN'T have Curry and how that loss of one person was impacting the average outcomes of each possession on each side of the floor.

So while the data is clearly going to be smaller without Curry vs. Portland and thus creates a bit larger range of possible error, it still was the equivalent of 1.5 games in total minutes worth of sample size to extrapolate. Here's what it shows.

In away games in Oakland, Portland was on average 5.5 pts worse than GS without Curry on the floor per game. That could be extrapolated to around -10 pts per 48 minute session. Thus you would look for a spread outside of GS favored between 5-10 in games 1 & 2 and jump on the one that's the other direction.

In home games at the Moda Center, Portland was on average 8 pts better without Curry on the floor per game, and extrapolated out to a 48 minute game, could be as high as a +13 pt favorite over GS when playing at home. So the spread in theory would be somewhere between 8-13 in Portland's favor, if the spread falls outside of that in Nevada, you jump on the it would fall. In this case likely it will be a pick-em or close to no spread when GS plays in Portland w/o GS, but we'll have to wait until Game 3 to see for sure, and we'll have much more game 1 and game 2 data to dive into by then.

In total, the good news for Blazers fans is that all of this adds up to a close match-up if Steph were to never return from injury in the series. And through just the first 4 games, assumin Steph doesn't come back within those games, the average math works out at Portland as a +1.1 pts per game using all samples combined and playing 4 games with 2 on each others' courts. So if Steph doesn't come back for games 1-4, we can plan on this being one hell of a nail biter when using some advanced handicapping analytics.

Interesting stats and analysis. Thanks for posting.

How well did this same analysis model with for GS versus Houston for the games Curry didn't play?

 

[kingslayer]

Kerr just said Curry has a slim chance of returning for game 2

 

[crandc]

I think the Blazers will get killed this game. Short turnaround and emotional letdown.

But maybe I'm wrong.

 

[kingslayer]

I think the Blazers will get killed this game. Short turnaround and emotional letdown.

But maybe I'm wrong.

Yeah, that's my gut feeling as well. Hopefully they surprise us.