Only going back 14 years sounds like "convenient manipulation" of stats to support a premise. How about going back to the Blazer's inception? We were a pretty raw team the first time we won the Title, and had never been in the playoffs as a team before that.
I don't think post-season experience matters as much as some NBA experts will make it out to be as a weakness of ours. Sure, it'd be nice to have a veteran who's been there before, but once we get into the game, all those things get thrown out. We might see a little nerves in the first quarter of Game 1, but after that, we'll be fine I feel like.
I think it all comes down to leadership. We have Roy and McMillan. I'm comfortable with those guys leading our team and keeping the team calm and confident.
Anyway, it seems silly to me to factor in playoff minutes for guys like Ruffin and Raef. Those guys won't matter at all. The playoffs are all about how well your best players perform. A serious analysis of this would have to at least filter it down to playoff experience of your top 5 MPG players. If you just looked at that, between Blake and Przybilla there are 212 minutes of playoff experience. Not a ton, but there are probably other squads with less.
I think experience is a factor. The intensity and pressure is up and of course in the playoffs you don't get easy games against OKC. But I think the very close race in the West means that essentially the Blazers have been playing "playoff basketball" for about the last month or so. They know that one loss can drop a team from 4 to 7. There are no "unimportant" games. So I think experience will be less of a factor than it might have been in a year when the seedings were pretty much settled early on. The Blazers are being playoff tested right now.
This is truth. In the last month every single game has been a Must Win game and Portland has managed with them just fine. If teams want to assume Portland will fold under the pressure of the playoffs then they are in for a rude awakening.
Experience may be a factor in game 1, but that's about it. I think playoff experience is seriously overrated. You're either good enough, or you're not.
So how much experience did the Blazers have when they knocked Utah out of the playoffs back when Grant, Wallace and Sabonis were here? The important thing is that Portland is built for playoff basketball. Paint domination. Physicality. That is what wins in the playoffs.
