Portland Trail Blazers: Will this postseason be any different?

After continuous disappointment, the question of whether or not the Portland Trail Blazers can win in the playoffs is a discussion worth having again.

In the 2018-19 NBA season, the Portland Trail Blazers have once again established themselves as one of the best teams in the loaded West, posting a stellar record of 39-24, tied for third-best in the conference.

Damian Lillard is once again having an All-Star level campaign. Fresh off a four-year, $48 million contract he signed last summer, center Jusuf Nurkic is averaging career highs across the board, and the team as a whole is humming along quite well, placing inside the top 10 in net rating.

And yet, when the annual discussion of those worthy enough to be deemed title contenders inevitably comes up, Portland never seems to hear its name called. It’s not that people don’t recognize how special they are, but they’ve seen this story before, and it’s never turned out well for the Blazers.

When it comes to postseason basketball, there is always at least one pretender among the 16 participants. This isn’t referring to those who may have snuck in with a sub-500 record. No, these teams look the part on paper, but everything else speaks volumes to their inability to get it done when it matters most.

Think of the Toronto Raptors in the DeMar DeRozan era, or the Atlanta Hawks with guys like Joe Johnson, Al Horford and then Paul Millsap. They always racked up regular season wins, and sure, at first it was just an honor to play into late April, but their constant postseason failure made sure nobody took them seriously no matter how well they played.

It meant little when the Hawks won a franchise record 60 games in 2014-15. Nor did anyone care when Toronto revamped its offense to include more ball movement last season. Coming up short time and time again stripped them of their ability to deserve the benefit of the doubt, something they’d have to earn back with the one thing they’d failed to consistently accomplish.

Unfortunately, that same predicament is where Portland finds itself in the present day. In the three seasons of the Lillard and C.J. McCollum era, the Blazers have made it past the first round a single time while suffering sweeps in each of the last two playoff runs, the most shocking of which came last year when, as the third seed, they were demolished by the New Orleans Pelicans.

This season, they rank fifth in offensive rating and allow the 12th-fewest points per game, but if the playoffs were to begin today, they’d face off against the Houston Rockets, a team that matches up well at every position. With home-court advantage, you may think the Blazers would win that series, but would anyone be surprised if they didn’t?

New Orleans unearthed the recipe to halt Portland’s dynamic duo, and other teams will likely implement the same strategy of simply forcing either Lillard or McCollum to give up the ball and dare their teammates to let it fly.

Even with that understanding, the front office did little to address the issue, seeing as how the forward positions get spotty production at best, while the second unit is one of the worst in the league.

The NBA would love nothing more than to see a small-market team like the Blazers make a deep run this postseason. Under the right set of circumstances, who knows what could happen? Unfortunately, ideal matchups are in short supply out West, and given Portland’s inability to learn from its mistakes, there’s a very high chance it’s doomed to repeat them.