In my recap of Game 1 of the 2019 Western Conference Finals, I mentioned a few things that I felt the Portland Trail Blazers would have to do in order to beat the Golden State Warriors with any measure of consistency.
Among those points was that the Blazers would have to find a way to exploit their considerable rebounding advantage on paper and turn that into second chance points. But, clearly, that’s a bit more complicated in reality than it sounds in theory.
The problem for Portland is that in order to take advantage of that rebounding advantage they have to make sacrifices defensively and offensively — with Jusuf Nurkic out due to season-ending injury, there just isn’t a big man on Portland’s roster who can score consistently and defend the Warriors’ schemes.