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BDL's 2015-16 NBA Playoff Previews: Los Angeles Clippers vs. Portland Trail Blazers

One of the wackier NBA regular seasons in history is over, for better or worse, and the two-month playoff run is set to begin. With the first round upon us, the minds at Ball Don't Lie decided to preview each series. Here's our look at the No. 4-seeded Los Angeles Clippers and No. 5 Portland Trail Blazers.

How They Got Here

Los Angeles: By bouncing back from a crushing second-round collapse against the Houston Rockets with a stunning comeback of their own — convincing defensive linchpin DeAndre Jordan to pull an about-face, renege on his agreement to join the Dallas Mavericks in free agency, and return to L.A. on a new four-year deal. (ICYMI: emojis.)

With Jordan back in the fold to anchor the Clippers' D, wreak havoc rolling to the rim and rejoin stars Chris Paul and Blake Griffin in pursuit of a title, coach and president of basketball operations Doc Rivers set about improving what was one of the league's worst benches last season in his own inimitable way — chiefly, by acquiring players who had played well against his team at some point in the past or are related to him. The results were ... spotty, with an early heartbreaker of a loss to the Golden State Warriors suggesting the Clips were a clear tier below the Western elite and touching off a stretch of inconsistent play that had L.A. just three games over .500 heading into Christmas Day.

And then things got worse, with Griffin tearing a tendon in his left quadriceps ... and then, stunningly, things got better, as the Clippers found new life by digging in on defense and doubling down on the CP3-DeAndre pick-and-roll.

The Clippers made lemons into lemonade, going 30-15 with Griffin on the shelf, as the All-Star point guard masterfully orchestrated a pristinely spaced attack, aided by sharpshooter (and noted podcast host) J.J. Redick turning in the best season of his career and leading the NBA in 3-point accuracy. On the other end, Jordan marshaled a defensive improvement that saw L.A. rank fifth in points allowed per possession during the three months Griffin missed to rehabilitate his quad injury ... and to heal the surgically repaired shooting hand that he broke in a fight with his friend (who is also the Clippers' assistant equipment manager), an incident that also earned him a four-game suspension.

The Clippers reactivated Griffin in time for the final seven games of the season; he's had a considerable amount of rust to knock off, but has also shown some flashes of his All-NBA-level all-around talent. On one hand, L.A. finished 5-0 in the games Griffin played, outscoring opponents by 73 points in his 123 minutes of floor time, and the Clips' starting five has absolutely crushed the competition since his return. On the other, those five games came against three lottery teams (the Wizards, the Lakers twice) and two injury-riddled lower-tier Western playoff squads (Dallas, Memphis), leaving room for some doubt as to whether relying on a sub-100 percent version of Griffin might come back to bite L.A. against healthy, talented, determined, real-deal opposition.

Oh, and the Clippers have a mascot now. Many folks, including Kanye West, dislike him. I think that about covers it.

Portland: By proving that losing four members of a starting five with title aspirations isn't all that bad if you manage to hang on to the right one.

Damian Lillard is one of the game's most dangerous scoring threats. (Steve Dykes-USA TODAY Sports)
Damian Lillard is one of the game's most dangerous scoring threats. (Steve Dykes-USA TODAY Sports)

The Blazers' hopes of making a dark-horse championship run went up in smoke last season when Wesley Matthews tore his Achilles tendon. After an injury-plagued Portland roster bowed out to the Grizzlies in Round 1 last spring, the rebuild was on — swingman Nicolas Batum shipped to Charlotte, center Robin Lopez and reserve shooting guard Arron Afflalo off to New York, Matthews down to Dallas and All-Star power forward LaMarcus Aldridge, gone to the Spurs.

With the exodus in full swing and the franchise's former cornerstone departed, general manager Neil Olshey focused on locking down Portland's next one, re-signing point guard Damian Lillard to a five-year, $120-plus million maximum-salaried contract to keep him around so he could lead the next competitive iteration of the Blazers. We just didn't expect him to do it this year.

Olshey banked on former first-round picks C.J. McCollum, Meyers Leonard and Allen Crabbe, the young players who had served as understudies on the Blazers' playoff teams. He focused on restocking Portland's roster with young talent in the same age range as the 25-year-old Lillard that had yet to get much of a chance on more veteran squads or had fallen out of their prior employers' plans for one reason or another — guys like Al-Farouq Aminu, Mason Plumlee, Noah Vonleh, Maurice Harkless, Ed Davis and Gerald Henderson. He trusted in head coach Terry Stotts to figure out how to take all that youth and athleticism and turn it into a cohesive unit on the court, and in Lillard — forever the product of Oakland, forever the small-school guy overlooked by traditional powers, forever the last guy left off the All-Star and USA Basketball rosters — to set the example for how to turn soft expectations into a hard-ass chip on their shoulders, and how to turn that motivation into minutes and production through the magic of work.

It took some hard-lived lessons, as Portland lost by double figures 11 times in its first 39 games, with the young Blazers ranking among the NBA's half-dozen worst defenses. It took some rotation juggling, with versatile wings Henderson and Harkless working their way into larger roles after the All-Star break. It took some tactical shifts, especially on defense, with Stotts deciding to have his big men dial down the aggression in their pick-and-roll coverage in favor of dropping back toward the paint to cut off drives and induce midrange jumpers. And, as it often does with young players, it took time, and repetition, and enough patience from Stotts to let the kids play through their mistakes and teach them as they went.

Eventually, though, the penny dropped and the improvement came. Since mid-January, the Blazers have been right around league-average in points allowed per possession while boasting one of the NBA's very best offenses. Stotts' flow offense, the lights-out shooting and perimeter playmaking of the Lillard-McCollum backcourt, the passing of Plumlee, the two-way strides made by Aminu and Crabbe, the off-the-bench jolt provided by Henderson and Davis ... the pieces began to fit, the whole thing began to sing, and Portland ripped off a 14-2 stretch that put them squarely in the playoff chase with six weeks left in the season.

Late-season stumbles by Dallas, Memphis, Houston and Utah helped the Blazers reach the No. 5 seed, a nearly unthinkable outcome back in October, but don't mistake good fortune for blind luck. Their standing is the residue of design, of hard work, and of an organization's willingness to believe in itself even — and perhaps especially — when nobody else does.

Head to Head: L.A. took the season series 3-1.

Portland's lone win came back in November, snapping a seven-game losing streak with a 102-91 win behind 27 points and seven assists from Lillard, who took over late and told the Clips — who were on the second night of a back-to-back on the road after that heartbreaking loss to the Warriors — what time it was:

The Clips got even a week and a half later at Staples Center, scoring a 15-point win behind big outings from Griffin (23 points, eight rebounds, six assists) and Jordan (18 points, 24 rebounds) in a game that saw Lillard leave after just 17 minutes with abdominal pain. L.A. led most of the way and maintained a 14-point lead with four minutes left, prompting Stotts to call for his charges to start intentionally fouling the bricklaying Jordan; he went 8-for-18 from the charity stripe down the stretch, and finished just 12-for-34 (the latter a Clipper record) from the line overall, but the Blazers couldn't take advantage.

"That just means more practice," Jordan said after the game. "It gets boring. And it makes me miss my reservations after the game. But other than that, it's the same."

L.A. won the third meeting, 109-98, to improve to 6-0 without the injured Griffin, thanks in part to Portland being without No. 2 scorer McCollum due to, of all things, a clerical error in which his name was not properly circled on a pregame roster list. A Clipper partisan might argue that the 21 points and 19 assists turned in by Paul, and the 36 combined points from shooting guards Redick and Austin Rivers, had at least as much to do with the win.

The final matchup of the season came late last month at Staples, again without Griffin, and went down the wire, with Paul and Lillard trading fourth-quarter haymakers in an exciting nip-and-tuck battle that ended with CP3 making a heck of an inbounds pass to find Redick for a buzzer-beating game-winner:

Not to be a prisoner of recency bias or anything, but I for one wouldn't mind seeing seven games of that kind of back-and-forth.

Likely Starting Lineups: For the Clips: Paul and Redick in the backcourt, Luc Mbah a Moute taking on the opponent's best perimeter scorer at small forward, and the Jordan-Griffin combo up front. It's been one of the league's best big-minute lineups this season, outscoring opponents by a whopping 19.4 points per 100 possessions in 273 shared minutes, balancing lights-out offensive efficiency and a nasty defense helmed by All-Defensive Team bookends Jordan and Paul.

How effective will Blake Griffin be after missing 45 games to injury? (Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images)
How effective will Blake Griffin be after missing 45 games to injury? (Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images)

L.A.'s excellent run without Griffin showed just how lethal an attack centered around a CP3-DeAndre pick-and-roll surrounded by shooters can be. It even led many to wonder whether the Clippers would be better served by trying to move Griffin this summer in pursuit of cost savings and complementary pieces (including, ideally, a true stretch four who can shoot 3-pointers at an elite clip) that might ultimately provide a smoother overall fit than the Griffin-Jordan pairing, which at times has suffered from the spacing crunch that comes with two big men who can't shoot 3s and who often occupy the same offensive real estate.

There's something to that idea, but it's worth wondering whether the Clippers could ever get fair value for Griffin, who's one year removed from operating as perhaps the playoffs' second- or third-best player during the defeat of the Spurs and who was putting up near-LeBron numbers before going down in December. He's an interior threat who demands double-teams in the post, a good midrange shooter who can take lumbering opponents off the bounce when facing up from the perimeter, a nightmare rolling to the rim off a screen, and a dynamite passer/playmaker who can relieve the creative burden Paul faces against elite opponents. If he's at or close to full strength, the Blazers just don't have an answer for him.

For Portland: Lillard and McCollum at the guard spots, Plumlee in the middle, and Aminu and Harkless on the wings. Stotts started the season pairing Leonard with Plumlee up front, but abandoned that after 10 games before settling on a Plumlee-Vonleh pairing for more than half the season; that lineup remains Portland's most frequently used five-man unit on the season, but it proved far too leaky on the defensive end, conceding points at a rate that would've ranked 28th in the league over the course of the full season.

If the Blazers were to make a real playoff push, they needed another option, and Stotts found it by inserting Harkless — a 6-foot-9 22-year-old who had mostly played the three spot, and whom Olshey picked up for almost literally nothing when the Orlando Magic decided he wasn't part of their future — in place of Vonleh. Plumlee-Harkless-Aminu-McCollum-Lillard had been an effective group, and was one of just seven lineups to share the court for more than 100 minutes before the switch, but it's been even better since Stotts went all-in on it, blowing away opponents by 16 points-per-100 over the final 11 games of the season.

Portland went 8-3 in those 11 games, with two losses coming at the buzzer — one to Redick's jumper, the other to Karl-Anthony Towns — with Harkless averaging 12 points, 6.5 rebounds and 2.1 combined blocks/steals in 27.5 minutes per game. His length, quickness and wingspan pair well with those of Plumlee and Aminu, giving Portland a frontcourt that can clog passing lanes and switch assignments defensively, while adding another active athlete who can get out in transition, attack the basket, and better take advantage of the space created by defenses having to stretch to stay connected to Lillard and McCollum than Vonleh did. Harkless still can't reliably shoot from outside and he's not much of a complementary playmaker, but he's bringing more to the table than he's taking off it, and he's helped this version of the Blazers find their best possible five at the best possible time.

Matchups to Watch:

Chris Paul vs. Damian Lillard ought to be one heck of a point guard battle. (AP/Steve Dykes)
Chris Paul vs. Damian Lillard ought to be one heck of a point guard battle. (AP/Steve Dykes)

Dame vs. CP3: They're two of the NBA's most ferocious competitors, best pick-and-roll orchestrators, and top fourth-quarter scorers. Lillard's a threat to pull up from damn near anywhere inside half-court, ram the ball all the way down your throat at the rim or draw your entire defense before dropping it off to a teammate. Paul's the league's premier midrange shooter and still one of its most creative interior finishers, and he's been surgical at commanding the Clips' offense to engineer quality shots for his teammates all year long. Paul's the more decorated veteran and the superior individual defender, but with offensive players this good, it's less a one-on-one matchup than a whole team effort geared at stopping them, and man, there's just something about Lillard on big stages … especially when he's got the added motivation of knowing an entire nation's picking against him.

Whichever point guard's able to more frequently impose his will on the series should give his team the edge. I can't wait to see this unfold.

Blake/DeAndre vs. the Blazers' frontcourt: Yes, Portland's found success with its small lineup recently, but can a Plumlee/Harkless pairing really hold up physically against two bulls like Griffin and Jordan? Former Raptor, Grizzly and Laker Ed Davis has been a tremendous weapon off the bench for the Blazers all year long, a dynamite screen-setter, rebounder, defender (both in space and on the interior) and finisher on the roll. If Stotts calls his number more often to match strength with strength, will Portland be able to generate enough offense to hang with the Clippers' attack?

Conversely, if the Blazers' charged-up downsized offensive look causes problems for L.A.'s size — or, for that matter, if Stotts circles back to the idea of Hack-a-Shaq'ing Jordan off the floor — would Rivers further explore using Griffin at the five with some combination of Mbah a Moute, Jeff Green, Paul Pierce and Wesley Johnson at the four to match up? If so, can the Clips survive defensively in that kind of alignment?

Bench battle: Portland's second unit has been one of the season's most pleasant surprises, with Davis bossing opposing frontcourts around, third-year shooting guard Crabbe developing into a knockdown shooter and dynamic scorer, and veteran swingman Henderson contributing solid two-way play on the wing to help keep the Blazers afloat when Lillard and McCollum hit the bench. The Clippers, on the other hand, have continued to be the sort of team whose starters build big leads only to watch feast-or-famine bench units led by Jamal Crawford and Austin Rivers — which Doc says he's used to help keep his starters' minutes down, but that have so often hemorrhaged points — fritter them away at the starts of second and fourth quarters. Whether or not Doc decides to start staggering his stars' minutes, Portland will have to take advantage of every opportunity it gets to make a dent when the Clippers' top guns get a breather.

How the Clippers Could Win: Lillard and McCollum can't slow down Paul and Redick. Griffin looks like his pre-injury self and eats whichever four Stotts throws at him alive. Jordan dominates the glass on both ends, Austin and Jamal manage at least one hot scoring game apiece, and Portland doesn't annihilate L.A. in reserve-heavy minutes.

How the Blazers Could Win: Paul and Redick can't slow down Lillard and McCollum. The Blazers' litany of active bodies keeps Blake for regaining his old form, the small-ball alignment continues to bear fruit, Aminu and Crabbe keep up their hot post-All-Star break 3-point shooting, and Portland makes major runs whenever CP3, Blake, Jordan or Redick sit.

Totally Subjective Entertainment Value Ranking: 8 out of 10. Two great offenses; the Clippers' established superstars; a super-compelling, sneering and too-cool underdog in Lillard; at least two games at the Moda Center, where Blazers fans should be nuts; one veteran team trying to stay relevant in the NBA conversation at the top and one young one trying to prove it belongs there. Just an awful lot to love here.

Prediction: Clippers in 7.

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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don't Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at devine@yahoo-inc.com or follow him on Twitter!

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