The Portland Trail Blazers are entering the most important stretch of their season

The final home stanza

The Portland Trail Blazers have six games in April, five of them are at the Moda Center. While this sounds nice, the play four playoff teams out of the six games. The only away game is against the Golden State Warriors who will have Steph Curry back by this stage.

This is the true test of the Trail Blazers playoff mettle. As they showed last year, you have to be in it to win it. Their star backcourt took them so close to a Finals berth, only being beaten by the incredibly talented Warriors team.

They take on the Utah Jazz, the Grizzlies, the Denver Nuggets, and the Los Angeles Clippers. The only easy game of the last six is against the Cleveland Cavaliers. If the games before are not played at a playoff atmosphere, these last six will be.

If the Trail Blazers want to do anything in the postseason they need to beat most of the playoff-bound teams during this extended run. They also need to take care of the teams they should beat in the effort to get back to .500 which is where they need to be.

The playoffs start now for the Portland Trail Blazers. They can afford to lose some games but not many. They need to treat each block of games as a playoff series, without that mentality the season has a good chance of slipping away.

This is not going to happen, the Trail Blazers are going to fight right until the end. They need to stay healthy, especially Lillard.