How can the Los Angeles Lakers and the Portland Trail Blazers extend their series on Thursday?
The Lakers and the Blazers both face must-win Game 6s at home after losing Tuesday on the road in their series, previously tied 2-2, albeit in very different fashions. With Anthony Davis sidelined by a groin strain, the Lakers were never competitive against the Phoenix Suns, while Damian Lillard's clutch shot-making pushed the Denver Nuggets to double overtime in Game 5 before Portland fell short.
As recently as Saturday, when the Blazers blew out the Nuggets at home and the Lakers led their series 2-1 prior to Davis' injury, it looked like we might get a Lakers-Blazers matchup in the conference semifinals.
How can each keep that hope alive with their seasons on the line?
With or without AD, the Lakers need more from LeBron
The biggest adjustment the Lakers can make for Game 6 is getting Davis back on the court. Even if that happens, however, the Lakers can't expect prime AD. And that means they're probably going to need more from LeBron James, who is limited in his own right by the high ankle sprain that sidelined him much of the second half of the season.
As Seth Partnow of The Athletic noted Wednesday, James has been creating his own offense less frequently in this series than any since his disappointing 2011 NBA Finals with the Miami Heat. That figured to change in Game 5. Instead, James had just seven points on 3-of-10 shooting in the first half, as the Lakers fell behind by 30 points at intermission.
We did witness James get more aggressive in the third quarter, which saw him score 17 points on 6-of-9 shooting, with 15 of those points coming from 3-point range. With Davis injured and point guard Dennis Schroder (13.2 points per game on 39% shooting in the series) struggling to provide the kind of scoring boost the Lakers anticipated when they traded for him last fall, the Lakers need James to think score-first from the start of Game 6.
I'd also like to see coach Frank Vogel think more offensive-minded with his rotations. The Lakers were able to stay afloat with Davis and James sidelined during the regular season by relying on stout defense. But now that Suns point guard Chris Paul is looking something more like himself after a shoulder injury limited him early in the series, that's doubtful to be enough against a Phoenix team that ranked seventh in the NBA in offensive rating during the regular season. The Lakers must find more shooting and scoring.
In the event Davis doesn't play, I'd suggest swapping in Kyle Kuzma for Markieff Morris as his replacement at power forward. Although Kuzma has been unable to make 3s in this series (4-of-21, 19%), he at least puts more pressure on the Suns defensively than Morris. Morris has scored just seven points in 22 minutes thus far, missing four of his five shot attempts.
Beyond that, I'd also want to get Montrezl Harrell back in the rotation off the bench, after he played only the fourth quarter of Game 5, when the result had been already long decided.
I understand Vogel's reservations about Harrell's limitations defending the pick-and-roll. Still, he is one of just three Lakers with a positive plus-minus in this series (plus-3 in 31 minutes), and the team needs anyone who can help with scoring, particularly when James is on the bench. The Lakers managed just four points on six possessions over the final 3:18 of Tuesday's first half, when James took his only extended break before garbage time.
Over the three halves since Davis went down with a groin strain, the Lakers have managed just 127 points, barely more than the Brooklyn Nets averaged per game (123.4) in their first-round win over the Boston Celtics.
If the Lakers can't find more offense than that on Thursday, the defending champs will be knocked out of the playoffs early.
The Blazers must step up on defense
For all the focus on Lillard and the offensive contributions of his teammates, this one simple stat predicts the Denver-Portland series: the Nuggets' 3-point shooting. In three wins (Games 2, 3 and 5), Denver has shot 52-of-110 (48%) from beyond the arc. In their Game 1 and Game 4 losses, the Nuggets made 30% of their 3-point tries (24-of-80).
In a make or miss league, there's only so much the Blazers can do about that. Overall, Second Spectrum tracking suggests that Denver's 3-point attempts in this series have been more difficult than average after accounting for the players taking those shots. Still, Portland can do better to tilt the odds in its favor by preventing dribble penetration and defensive breakdowns that produce open 3s.
We saw such breakdowns frequently in the first half of Game 5, many of them involving Lillard -- a disappointment after his message to teammates about the importance of the game. Of course, Lillard did more than enough to make up for it by setting an NBA playoff record with 12 3-pointers en route to 55 points. In overtime, Lillard's teammates shot a combined 1-of-14 from the field, preventing the Blazers from taking advantage of his historic night.
It's worth remembering that Lillard's teammates picked him up three days earlier, in Game 4, when Lillard's 1-for-10 shooting performance was his worst in a game since November 2016. That didn't matter, because Norman Powell (29), CJ McCollum (21) and Jusuf Nurkic (17) combined for 67 points on 26-of-42 shooting. Lillard more often carries Portland than the other way around, but there's no reason to believe his teammates' Game 5 shooting is any more likely to recur than Lillard's off game from Saturday.
Besides the Nuggets' 3-point shooting, Nurkic's ability to stay on the court while dealing with presumptive MVP Nikola Jokic also has been a bellwether in this series. Nurkic fouled out of all three Denver wins, playing less than 25 minutes in both Games 2 and 5 because of foul trouble. Nurkic drew just seven total fouls in 64 minutes in the two Blazers victories. Given Nurkic is inevitably going to pick up fouls defending Jokic one-on-one, he has to do better in avoiding offensive fouls -- as three of Nurkic's six fouls in Game 5 came at that end of the court.
The good news is Portland has rather literally been here before. When these teams met in the conference semifinals two years ago, the Nuggets won Game 5 in Denver to take a 3-2 lead in the series only to see the Blazers win the next two games, including a deciding Game 7 on the Nuggets' home court. That's the path Portland again must follow to advance in the playoffs.