This Portland Trail Blazers fan wants the New Orleans Pelicans to win the NBA title

After watching the Blazers, my favorite NBA team, get punked out of the playoffs in a short and devastating four-game sweep, I’ll be watching the Pelicans to see how high they can fly.

Typically, when the team we follow and cheer for — in my case, the Portland Trail Blazers — gets thoroughly thumped — vanquished! — by a rival, we wish nothing but ill (sports) will on the vanquisher.

But that’s not going to happen this time. At least not for me. And if I were a betting man, I would bet that much of Rip City — while perhaps not actively supporting the New Orleans Pelicans — is at least intensely curious to see how they fare in the second round.

Because the Pelicans totally obliterated the Trail Blazers. And … I … mean … obliterated.

Will they be able to do the same thing to other Western Conference playoff opponents?

Blazers In The Playoffs

Much to Rip City’s chagrin, Portland is no stranger to first-round playoff exits; the Blazers have made the playoffs 34 times in their 48 seasons and have been bounced in the first round 23 of those times.

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For those of you keeping score — and there are a lot of you if our Twitter feeds are any indication — that means the Trail Blazers have lost in the first round 67.6 percent of the times they’ve made the playoffs.

And yet somehow — despite our familiarity with the first-round playoff doldrums — this four-game sweep at the hands (wings?) of the Pelicans hurts a little more than we remember first-round exits hurting.

Why?

The hurtin’ is so bad, in fact, that some Blazers fans are calling for Terry Stotts’ to be given the ol’ heave-ho. (This would be a dumb thing to do, as we argue here.)

Furthermore, some critics — The Oregonian/OregonLive’s John Canzano, for instance, who should know better, but doesn’t — suggest that getting rid of anybody and everybody, including Damian Lillard, might be an appropriate course correction for the franchise.

What gives?

The Pelicans’ Method

I keep returning to this, but one reason for this overreaction is just how efficiently New Orleans torched Portland’s playoff aspirations. By hounding Lillard and CJ McCollum every time they touched the ball, the Pelicans bet — wisely — that no other Blazers player would be able to step up enough to beat them.

The Pelicans were extremely effective at carrying out this game plan, especially against Lillard, who didn’t score more than 20 points in any of the four first-round playoff games against NOP. And he was just 25/71 (35.2 percent) from the field, including 9/30 (30 percent) from three in the series.

Compare those numbers with Lillard’s regular season average of 26.9 points per game on 43.9 percent shooting from the field, including 36.1 percent from three, and it becomes apparent how effectively the Pelicans shut Dame Dolla down.

That stifling defense often led to the Pelicans’ turbo-tempo offense racking up an impressive percentage of baskets. The Pelicans never shot below 47.7 percent in the series (that was in Game 1). And in three of the four games, they shot better than 51 percent from the field, culminating in a ridiculous 57.7 percent in Game 4.