Quietly, Portland Is Very Confident

Somewhere, somehow, these NBA playoffs became as much about style as they were about results.

It’s like the old days at the playground: it wasn’t enough to beat the team on the court, you wanted to impress the women watching along the sidelines too.

The Portland Trail Blazers finished off the Utah Jazz in five games with an 81-79 victory Tuesday night, but the woman just left with some guy who pulled up in a drop-top Mercedes.

The Trail Blazers didn’t look quite as dominant in losing at Utah and eking out a “fortunate” (their word) home victory in the final two games of this series. Now they meet the Lakers, who haven’t looked so big and bad during their four playoff road games. And all of that means . . . absolutely nothing.

Forget all this talk about losing an “air of invincibility”. The only “air” that ever determined a championship was Air Jordan.

It’s impossible to apply trends from one series to another because the matchups change. Even within a series, the shifting venues and strategies can make one day’s blowout seem like ancient history after the next game.

It’s time to stop worrying about the people on the sidelines and time to see who’s got next.

It’s the Lakers and the Trail Blazers at last in the Western Conference finals.

“The showdown will be here,” Portland point guard Greg Anthony said. “I think it will be everything everyone expects.”

And, while they might not be spouting off about it to the media, the Trail Blazers expect to win.

They feel the Lakers have just two components--Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant--while the Trail Blazers have an array of weapons.

They feel they can expose Glen Rice, who hasn’t made the open jumper as consistently this season as he has throughout his career.

They feel they can afford to leave players such as Ron Harper and A.C. Green and go double-team Shaq.

They like Rasheed Wallace against any power forward in the league, let alone the Laker tandem of Green and Robert Horry.

None of this should come as news. Neither should Portland’s plan of attack.

“We figure we’re going to go with depth,” Portland guard Steve Smith said.

Smith, Wallace, Scottie Pippen, Arvydas Sabonis and Damon Stoudamire in the starting lineup. Anthony, Brian Grant, Detlef Schrempf and Bonzi Wells off the bench. Put them in any combination and they’re all a threat to score.

“What helps for us is, you take away one thing, you’ve got to give up something,” Smith said. “You want to double-team me, you’ve got to give up a jump shot to some big man or other guys who can shoot. If you want to trap the pick-and-roll, Sabas [Sabonis] can hit the jump shot. If you want to play Rasheed by single coverage, he’s going to score. We go to whatever the go-to play is or wherever we see a disadvantage at.”

So they can win with Pippen scoring 28 points (as he did in the series-opener against Minnesota) or scoring four points (as he did in Game 3 at Utah).

The Lakers present their own set of problems, starting with the big guy wearing No. 34.

Their big guards (Harper, Bryant and Brian Shaw) will keep the Trail Blazers from going to Smith in the low post as often as they did against Utah’s Jeff Hornacek and Howard Eisley.

“Our strengths hurt the other team--and I mean that for them as well,” Anthony said. “When you’ve got a guy like Shaquille O’Neal and you’ve got a guy like Kobe Bryant and you’ve got the role players that they have, it makes it difficult. If you can’t contain Kobe off the dribble and you can’t somehow contain Shaq in the paint, it could be a long night for you. However, we feel like we do have a few guys on our front line who have the ability to defend him. You’re not going to stop him, but we can at least have some impact on what he’s trying to do and therefore impact the rest of their players.”

Keep this in mind: Brian Grant played only one eight-minute stretch over the course of 12 games because of plantar fasciatis in his right foot.

His time on the shelf began with the loss to the Lakers in that showdown matchup on Feb. 29. The Trail Blazers lost five of those games without Grant and dropped out of contention for the best record in the conference

“People don’t understand,” Smith said. “It’s another big body. Another 10-plus rebound guy. Another guy you have to double-team. And then another guy who’s put in the rotation, [it] gives another big guy on our team some rest.

“The one great thing I like about our team is we didn’t use anything as an excuse. But to have him out--and Sabonis out [nine games with a sprained right foot]--that’s all our rebounders. That’s all our inside presence.”

With the whole team together and healthy, they dominated the first three games of this series. They couldn’t sweep because they did not match Utah’s effort in Game 4, then they settled for--and missed--too many outside shots during their 33-point first half in Game 5.

They went back inside during the second half, but still trailed by four points in the final minute.

Wallace scored inside and Pippen made a three-pointer over Bryon Russell to take the lead. Russell missed two free throws and couldn’t get a foul called on the final shot of the game.

“We felt some slippage in our game since we jumped on this team, 3-0,” Pippen said. “We have to go back in practice and beat up each other again the next few days and get our intensity up so we can come out and play hard again.”

It should follow the same pattern as the regular season, in which the Lakers and Trail Blazers split four games and each won in the other’s building.

It should come down to the Lakers winning in Game 7.

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J.A. Adande can be reached at his e-mail address: j.a.adande@latimes.com.