Victor Wembanyama Overwhelms Trail Blazers in Playoff Debut

📍SAN ANTONIO — Say this for the Trail Blazers in their playoff debut: they didn't look unready for the moment.

There was one sequence three minutes into the first quarter of their Game 1 loss to the San Antonio Spurs that gave away the nerves of the first playoff game for both of these teams. Toumani Camara caught a pass in the left corner and airballed a wide-open three; the Spurs got the rebound and De'Aaron Fox pushed in transition before pulling up for a similarly wide-open three-point attempt, which also missed everything.

"We were a little bit excited," Deni Avdija admitted afterwards. "A lot of our guys, it was our first playoffs, including myself. We're not the most experienced. I felt like we could have played better. It wasn't our greatest game. But part of it was having our first playoff game and being in this environment. It was a little shocking, I'll be honest with you."

If that assessment was a little more concise, it could have replaced Jarrett Allen's immortal "The lights were brighter than expected" line as a go-to for the viral quote graphic industry.

But the brightness of the lights and the volume of the fiesta-colored San Antonio crowd didn't overwhelm the Blazers. As a first foray into playing games that matter for this group against an equally inexperienced but much deeper Spurs team, they acquitted themselves perfectly fine in the loss.

The other team just has Victor Wembanyama, and there's not a lot you can do about that.