My feelings on this are complicated and not entirely settled. It's been a tough ride. After our two finals appearances, I had assumed we'd get back to things like the WCF and that never happened again (with that team) and then we ended that era getting bounced in the first round 3 years in a row. We had our nice WCF run in '07 and there's a depressing component of knowing that, had we been able to win 3 more games, we would have won it all that year. We then haven't been able to advance out of the second round. We got bumped by the Lakers initially, then I think we met them in the first round after that point. We're going to ignore our first round sweep at the hands of the Spurs. When we played the Clippers in 2017, I was nervous. Definitely thought we could win, but got really nervous before game 1 and when Gobert went down like 15 seconds into the game, I thought 'well, next year, I guess.' Pulling that out was great, but then swept by Golden State. I was more hopeful we could compete more because we were able to play and matchup better against them in the regular season. The next year I was hopeful we could beat OKC, but after the first game that we lost I felt we were too outmatched by star power. We met Houston in the second round and I had wanted to face them in a 1/8 matchup the whole season before we went on our tear. I thought psychologically they were fragile and thought we'd have a good chance at an upset. I think we won game 2 and that seemed to switch the momentum, then we got wiped out in game 3. The next year wasn't great. Denver series was disappointing.
But now? I kinda feel the same way about this series as I did against LA in 2017 and against OKC in 2018. Maybe I worry about star power kicking into gear and us folding mentally. That's my biggest fear. With the Grizzlies it was about staying engaged, with the Clippers it will be about staying confident. If we can come out and punch them hard in the first game, then I think that will calm any nerves we have and carry us through the rest of the series. My biggest fear is putting ourselves in a position where we doubt ourselves and then start playing timid and stupid. I think we would have beat LAC last year. They're not tough mentally at all, but they're not consistently weak. They can certainly peak on that end in this series before falling flat in the future. They can't be consistently tough. If we put them on their heels from the get go, we'll get the major psychological advantage, and it will cut both ways. But if we don't come out hard and hold the first two games, that momentum can swing and they can get confident while we go into a shell. I don't know what to predict. We can definitely win this, and we can win it easy. If things align right, we could go 4-1. But we could also botch this. In any case, we should be going farther than we have previously, and I have a hard time thinking, if we lost, that we only win 2 games.
I don't like game that I'm nervous about. The idea of facing Dallas would be like me watching Memphis. When we lost game 1, I still thought we'd win, and it sucked, but I could just lay back (sort of, maybe I'm saying that in hindsight). I'd like us to be up 2-0 by Thursday.