NBA 2018-19: 3 reasons why the Portland Trail Blazers can eliminate the Denver Nuggets

#3 Overall statistics support the aforementioned belief to a large extent

Portland and Denver are not used to such high stakes.

According to official NBA numbers, the Spurs-Nuggets series was the slowest series of all first round matchups this year, with just 93.1 possessions per team per 48 minutes. To go along with that, Jokic and his Nuggets lost the opening quarter in five of the seven games.

During the regular season, the Nuggets allowed the pick-and-roll ball handlers to score just 0.83 point per possession. However, this went up to 0.98 against the Spurs and keeping in mind how well the Trail Blazers execute the pick-and-roll with Lillard at the top of key, this comes as a bonus.

On the other hand, the Trail Blazers were the best three-point shooting team(40.5%) in the first round, along with holding the Thunder to under a point per possession in three of the five games. Portland also lead the postseason in terms of time of possession with an average of 23.8 minutes per game.