Warriors-Blazers preview: 7 things to watch

PLAYOFF SCHEDULE | EXPERT BRACKETS

Whether it was the fortune of Chris Paul and Blake Griffin being knocked out of the playoffs due to injuries before the end of Game 4, or the Portland Trail Blazers just playing well enough to advance to the second round, the Blazers, after eliminating the Clippers with a 106-103 win in Game 6 on Friday, will now have the great pleasure, and pain, of trying to take down the Golden State Warriors.

Game 1 is Sunday, and the Blazers will again have the good fortune of the opposing team’s best player being out — this time, of course, that player being Stephen Curry.

Nobody knows exactly how long Curry will be out. He said Friday he will try to beat the two-week timetable. Certainly the Warriors would’ve loved for the Blazers-Clippers series to go seven to allow Curry a little more time, and now the question becomes can Portland take full advantage of every minute Curry is unable to play.

With or without Curry, the Blazers are not afraid of the Warriors. In the first game after the All-Star break, they hung 137 points on the board in throttling the champs by 32 points. The Warriors are still the heavy favorite, of course, but things have broken about as well as they could for the Blazers as they try to continue this success story nobody could have predicted coming into the season.

The Warriors won the regular-season series 3-1, destroying the Blazers by double digits in all three wins. But again, there was that one night in Portland when the Blazers showed just how dangerous their offensive firepower can be. Here are the storylines to track during Round 2 between these two high-octane attacks:

1. How many games will Steph Curry miss in this series?

Game 1 will be a week since the injury when Curry hit the Donatas Motiejunas sweat streak like a cartoon character steps on a banana peel. He was supposed to be re-evaluated after two weeks, but since that initial diagnosis of a Grade 1 MCL sprain, Golden State GM Bob Meyers basically said that two-week timetable was merely an educated guess. With Game 1 being Sunday, if Curry were to be out two weeks on the nose, he would miss Games 1-3 and return for Game 4 in Portland on May 9. It’s entirely plausible that he could miss Game 4 as well.

Portland, clearly, needs to make hay during that stretch.

So what would constitute making hay? Do the Blazers have to be up 2-1 or tied 2-2 depending on the return? Is that the only way for them to have a real chance at winning this series? Or does it need to be more severe than that with a 3-0 or 3-1 record?

You have to remember that whenever Steph returns, he won’t necessarily be 100 percent. It just means he’s good enough to play without totally worrying himself and the team. That doesn’t mean he wouldn’t be a weapon either. The Warriors went down 2-1 against Memphis and 2-1 against Cleveland last year. Can they survive a similar predicament against this Blazers team?

2. The Warriors have to figure out how to stop the Blazers’ 3-point shooting

The Warriors were the second-best team defending the 3-point shot this season, giving up just 33.2 percent from deep after being fifth in the NBA a year ago at 33.7 percent. The Warriors understand stopping those 3-point bombs is as important as their ability to drop them on their opponents, but the Blazers, it so happens, were one of the few teams the Warriors struggled to stop beyond the arc this season. Against Golden State, Portland shot a ridiculous 46.3 percent from 3-point range on just over 30 attempts per game.

And they hit these 3s in a varoety of ways — 46 percent on pull-up 3-pointers, nearly 46 percent on catch-and-shoot — so the Warriors can’t just settle in on a particular attack. This wasn’t just a result of that 137-point game by Portland either. They were good in two of the games and flamethrowers in the other two games.

In those …

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