8 takeaways from Blazers' play-in win over Grizzlies

In the NBA's first-ever postseason play-in game on Saturday, the eighth-seeded Portland Trail Blazers outlasted the ninth-seeded Memphis Grizzlies to secure the final Western Conference playoff spot.

Here are eight takeaways from the Blazers' 126-122 win.

The play-in should be here to stay

The NBA couldn't have asked for much more from the play-in format it adopted for this strange season. The game was tight, fun, and incredibly intense. Even without spectators, the stakes were palpable. There's no reason this shouldn't be the first of many games of its kind.

The league already reportedly toyed with the idea of creating a play-in tournament to decide the final playoff spots in each conference, but using it during the Disney restart was more of a measure for desperate times. The league was intent on bringing more than 16 teams to the bubble, and it needed to give those outside the playoff picture something to play for.

Not only did the six-team race for the two West play-in spots make the seeding stage infinitely more compelling, but it also produced a wildly entertaining elimination game on the eve of the playoffs; a perfect appetizer before the main course.

There's something eminently charming about seeing two non-contenders take center stage and play a game with enough desperation to make you forget they aren't playing for a championship but for the honor of a likely first-round exit. Not every season would bring the same drama or excitement, but the promise of more regular-season cappers like this one should be enough to make the play-in a permanent fixture.

A fitting end to the Grizzlies' season

The young, ahead-of-schedule Grizzlies were a joy to watch this season despite everything kind of coming apart for them in the bubble under a cascade of injuries.

The Grizzlies lost Justise Winslow, Tyus Jones, and Jaren Jackson to injuries, went 2-6 in the seeding games to blow their 3 1/2-game cushion for the No. 8 seed, nearly missed out on the play-in altogether, and forced themselves in a position to have to beat Portland twice in a row to make the playoffs. They came out flat, falling behind by 15 points in the first quarter. They could've folded right there, but instead, they locked in at both ends and willed themselves back into the game.

A second-quarter run sparked by Kyle Anderson and Jonas Valanciunas erased the deficit in the blink of an eye, and the Grizzlies hung tough from there. Their guards fought hard through screens to limit what Bubble MVP Damian Lillard could do off the bounce. Brandon Clarke got red-hot from deep and Ja Morant diced up Portland in the pick-and-roll. Memphis dropped 42 points in the third quarter and led by as many as eight in the fourth, before CJ McCollum caught fire.

The Grizz will surely feel gutted to have missed the playoffs after their position seemed so secure entering the bubble, but there was no shame in losing this one the way they did, especially given how shorthanded they were. Their future remains extremely bright, largely because of their luminescent young point guard.

Ja showed up

Morant began this game looking very much like a jittery rookie getting his first taste of single-elimination competition. The first quarter featured indecision, tentative drives, turnovers on forced passes, and a bunch of clanked jumpers when defenders ducked under screens and dared him to shoot. He seemed to struggle without Jackson there to stretch the floor and open up driving lanes with his pick-and-pop gravity.

In the second half, though, Morant was a completely different player, determined to get downhill and put pressure on the rim. He split double teams, corkscrewed into the lane, drove right at Jusuf Nurkic, collapsed the defense, and lasered passes to 3-point shooters. He hit three triples of his own, finally punishing Blazers guards for going under on him. He racked up 24 points and seven assists in the second half alone to finish with a game-high 35 and eight. And he did it all with a broken thumb.

He's going to be a special player for a long time.

Nurk's inspired performance

Just before the start of the game, Nurkic announced on Instagram that his grandmother died after battling COVID-19. He told reporters postgame that he initially didn't want to play but instead drew on a reservoir of internal strength and played one of the games of his life.

"I think she made me play," he said of his grandmother.

With Lillard garnering a ton of attention, the Blazers had to run a lot of their offense through Nurkic, and he didn't disappoint. He scored from the low post, picked out cutters from the high post, made plays on the short roll, and even stepped out and hit a pair of threes. When the Grizzlies trapped Lillard in the pick-and-roll, Nurkic would slip underneath, take the feed, and either rumble to the rim or zip the ball to wide-open corner shooters out of the four-on-three. After a tough rebounding game against the Brooklyn Nets on Thursday, he redoubled his commitment to the glass, repeatedly giving second efforts and using tap-outs to secure possessions or create extra ones.

Nurkic understandably struggled defensively down the stretch, as he ran out of gas and Morant attacked him in space. Moving laterally became a bigger challenge as the game carried on, but he was still able to create deflections and turnovers with his active hands.

It's important to remember that this was just the ninth official game Nurkic has played since spending 16 months on the shelf after suffering a broken leg. Playing through emotional pain and physical exhaustion, he gutted it out for 41 minutes because his backup, Hassan Whiteside, was borderline unplayable and the team looked lost without him. Nurkic finished with 22 points, 21 rebounds, six assists, two steals, two blocks, and a team-high plus-18 on-court rating.

CJ Time

In Game 7 of last year's West semifinals against the Denver Nuggets, on the road in the altitude, Lillard was running on fumes. He shouldered an enormous workload to get the Blazers to that point and was flat-out gassed. So, just when he was needed most, Lillard's sidekick stepped in to don the cape and play hero ball. In the defining performance of his career, McCollum carried the Blazers to a win with 37 points on 17-of-29 shooting, including a flurry of iso mid-range jumpers late in the fourth quarter.

The stakes weren't quite as high in this one, but it was hard not to get deja vu watching McCollum - who is playing through a fractured freaking spine - completely take over down the stretch while Lillard was being face-guarded and denied the ball by Dillon Brooks.

With Morant guarding him, McCollum uncorked a dazzling array of crossovers and hit all manner of floaters, pull-ups, and step-back threes on his way to 14 fourth-quarter points that turned the game on its head. Memphis eventually gave in and switched Brooks onto McCollum, and Lillard - who got a nice breather while playing spectator to his bandmate's solo - promptly drove into the teeth of the defense and set up Carmelo Anthony for the dagger three.

It was one more reminder among many that for all the questions over the years about whether Lillard and McCollum are the right fit for each other, sometimes it's just really nice to have two elite creators on the same team.

Lillard under control

Speaking of the Bubble MVP, he didn't have the kind of volcanic individual performance that he's made routine during the past two weeks, but he was quietly dominant all the same.

With the Grizzlies showing him extra bodies, Lillard didn't force anything, but rather used their pressure against them with timely passes that created man-advantage scenarios and almost always led to open threes down the chain. When the Blazers moved him off the ball, Memphis' guards played him on the top side to prevent him from coming up to get it, so he alertly cut to the basket. On a handful of those cuts, he drew help from the weak side and passed out to the corner. On one such play, he obliterated Valanciunas on a dunk.

He took a back seat when he needed to and finished with only 15 shot attempts - that dunk was his only 2-point attempt - and 21 shooting possessions, far lower than what we've grown accustomed to seeing from him in the bubble. And he still finished with 31 points on those 21 possessions, while dishing 10 assists and committing just one turnover. All in all, it was a remarkable display of restraint and control from a player who's become so much more than just a great scorer.

In case you need an illustration of just how important Lillard was to his team in this one: he registered a plus-17 rating in 45 minutes of work, and the Blazers got outscored by 13 points during his three minutes on the bench.

The full Dillon Brooks experience

Before the game, I suggested Brooks would be the X-factor, and I'm honestly not sure whether that came to fruition or not. We got a combination of good Dillon Brooks and bad Dillon Brooks.

An example of the duality of Brooks came during the third quarter: he hit a 31-foot bomb at one end of the floor and then committed a three-shot foul on Lillard at the other end eight seconds later. Shortly after that sequence, he bulldozed his way to the basket for an and-1 layup that cut the Blazers' lead to one point.

On the whole, there was more good than bad in this one. Brooks generally did a really good job evading screens and staying in contact with Lillard, not allowing him to step into clean pull-up threes out of the pick-and-roll. He forced an offensive foul on Nurkic because of how difficult he was to screen. At the same time, he shot 3-of-13 from 2-point range, consistently looking off the Grizzlies' bigs on the roll to hunt his own inefficient offense, which usually consisted of bonked floaters and semi-contested 18-footers.

Memphis signed Brooks to a three-year, $35-million extension this year, which is probably fair value for him. He does a lot of good things for the Grizzlies and is capable of making winning plays. But if he's going to be part of their future, they probably need him to scale things back and refine his shot selection, which may require Memphis adding a bit more off-the-bounce scoring punch.

Portland's problem at the 4

The Blazers' power forward situation remains a major issue for them. They've been starting big man Zach Collins at the four inside the bubble, but he hasn't shot the three at a high enough clip or defend well enough in space to be particularly effective at that spot. And Portland doesn't really have any other good options.

In this game, with Collins struggling out of the gate and then leaving the contest for good after just seven minutes due to an ankle injury, the Blazers were forced to play spot minutes with Whiteside at the four alongside Nurkic. They survived the first stint with those two on the floor together, but the second was disastrous. It made it easier for the Grizzlies to trap Lillard without worrying about leaving a 3-point shooter open, and Brandon Clarke was able to stretch Whiteside out at the other end.

Carmelo Anthony was manning the four before Collins returned from his injury, but that was never a good option at the defensive end. Anthony hit the dagger in this game, as he seems to do once every two contests in the bubble, but before that, the Grizzlies were having a field day targeting him in the pick-and-roll. The Blazers just don't have any other big wings they can slide into that spot, so for now they'll have to live with what Collins, Anthony, and - in a real pinch - Whiteside can give them.

Looking ahead to a matchup against LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers, that weakness looks very likely to be their undoing.