The Portland Trail Blazers made quick work of the Oklahoma City Thunder in the first round of the playoffs, winning the series in five games. A lot of people are making a huge deal out of it, especially since the team is coming off back-to-back first round exits over the past two years, but for the Blazers, they don't see their win against OKC as something to over-celebrate.
In an interview with Joe Freeman of The Oregonian, Blazers star Damian Lillard thinks that their win against OKC shouldn't be a big deal to many because they can do far greater things than just win the first round of the playoffs.
“I wasn’t looking at it like, this is a big deal. I was looking at it like, all right, we’ve got that out of the way. We got the first one. I was just ready to go to the next thing. It was almost like a little bit of fear came in. I don’t want this to be it.”
Lillard — who played the role of the hero in Game 5 when he hit the buzzer-beating 3-pointer to end the series — added that he saw a compilation of fans reacting to that specific play, but instead of getting pumped up, he started to wonder about the possibilities.
“I saw a video of people around the city in bars and stuff reacting to it [his game-winner]. And instead of me being excited about that night, I was like, ‘What if we win the second round? What if we go to the Western Conference Finals? How are they going to react then?’ That was my mentality.”
CJ McCollum shares the same mentality as his backcourt partner. For him, the Blazers just did what they had to do to advance to the conference semifinals. While OKC tried to make a statement all series long, McCollum and his teammates were just there with a ‘business as usual' mindset.
“Just another day, man. There’s no celebration. We won a series. Unlike most of the media, we didn’t think we were going to just go get swept. We expected to go compete. We expected to take care of home court. And in our minds we did what we were supposed to do.”
Blazers forward Moe Harkless also chimed in, pointing out that the team isn't contented with just getting past the first round. They want to make a deep run in the playoffs, and that's where their motivation is coming from.
“I don’t think anybody in here is satisfied. We’re happy that we were able to take care of business in the first round, but we’re not satisfied. We know that we’ve got more work to do. We’re capable of doing more things this postseason.”
The Blazers have suffered a ton of disappointments over the past couple of years, but they believe that their time has finally come to show the rest of the league that they're here to win a championship.
Portland will face the winner of the Denver Nuggets-San Antonio Spurs in the second round of the playoffs.
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