4-28-2002. 1st Round, Gm 3. This was the 3rd straight season that the Lakers and Blazers played in the playoffs with LA winning all three and 2001 also being a 1st round matchup. Porty truly detested the Lakers by this point in time. It was also the final season with 5 game 1st Round series, the league changed to 7 gms in 2003. Reason they did that is because before 2000, the NBA had fewer of its 1st Round games nationally televised. If you were watching a game on TNT, they would briefly check in on other gms that were only televised locally. From 2000-02, they started showing more games and it created a logjam where every team had some 1st Round gms that were 3-4 days apart and fans didn't like this, so they just pushed it to 7 games to fix the problem. Evidence of this can be found in the past scores at bballref from the late 90s and back, to 2000-02, to 2003-now.
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Porty has beaten the Lakers about 80% of the time in the RS since about 1993 and they generally play us like it's a war every time up there (I counted 11 Laker wins in POR from 1993/94 to the 2018/19 season opener where we lost at POR in Bron's debut. That's a span of 53 total games. We've finally won 3 in a row up there for the first time since probably the 80s). I say "we" as in most of my viewers are Lakersfan. We lost a 2OT gm at POR only a week before this series started in 2002, in the 80th game of the season. Refs allowed Sheed and Pippen to get in Fisher's face as he was trying to tie the game at the FT line.
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The good thing is that Porty's RS dominance doesn't apply as much to the Playoffs. Lakers won 4 Playoff gms at Porty from just 2000-02. Is this game one of those Ws? That's the question. You don't know the answer. You only think you do. You MUST watch this game because your memory isn't what it was back in 02 and you could be wrong as hell.