Anthony Davis and Damian Lillard are the same size

At season’s end the Portland Trail Blazers were one win shy of 50 and one game ahead of the New Orleans Pelicans. The two teams split their four regular season games, and either could have easily ended up with the Denver Nuggets’ April schedule—at home with 46 wins and no more games to play. But that’s not what happened, and Portland is a three seed hosting a six. Then again,  playoff seeding doesn’t matter much when the margin between the two teams is melted butter.

Portland is now in its third season without LaMarcus Aldridge, and while some of the money spent in his absence has been questionable, Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum continue to play like the best backcourt not wearing blue and yellow. Jusuf Nurkic is neither here nor there, but always noticeable in background or box score. The Blazers win games on the heroics of their backcourt, but they will depend on the unsung merits of their frontcourt players in the playoffs.

The New Orleans Pelicans started the season with two pillars named DeMarcus Cousins and Anthony Davis. Both hail from the University of Kentucky, which is less a basketball factory than a rubber stamp. Relying on two big men, however non-conventional and dynamic in their skill sets, blessed the Pelicans with an ancient architecture in a league growing ever more modern and un-centered.

Read more: Is Donovan Mitchell ready for the Thunder? 

But DeMarcus Cousins is out (and has been for a while), so the names on the marquee for this matchup will be Portland’s Damian Lillard and New Orleans’ Anthony Davis. They don’t play the same position and are separated by nine inches and approximately 60 pounds. In no way are they part of the same weight class, and yet they will be talked about as if they were sparring partners hoping to get a shot at the Western Conference’s real heavyweight, the Golden State Warriors. And, depending on the health of Steph Curry, this prologue of combative contenders could very well be more entertaining than whatever happens next.

Maybe the one characteristic college basketball really holds over the professional game is a single elimination tournament full of contrasting styles. This series, though, will play with all that old-timey theory and debate. The Portland Trail Blazers approach the game from the outside in. The New Orleans Pelicans from the inside out. The best players on each team are recognized nationally but are primarily hailed as regional heroes. This clash is old fashioned but promises something brand new.

Lillard has played in six playoff series over the last four seasons, winning two of them. In the last two postseasons, he averaged 26.5 and 27.8 points per game. Continually redefining the levels of his game, he is in the postseason even more what he is during the regular season: fearless and always scoring. He is good; better than what a lot of people think. And he knows it too.

He walks like a young man with a chip on his shoulder. He talks like an old man hardened by life’s slights and bitterness. He would definitely go down with the plane, the boat, the process. He should have been cast in Creed. He’s tougher than Michael B. Jordan. In past playoffs, he’s been handed losses by decision at the hands of Golden State (twice), San Antonio, and Memphis. But every time he swears losing off for good, you believe him. He is you. He is the little dude dancing and leaping in the foreground of Mike Tyson’s Punchout. But he doesn’t whine to his trainer. Things are never too hard; they are what they are and do what they do. As a result of sheer determination, he is destined to bang against the game until the game breaks or he falls apart. And that moxie eventually undermines the notion of Lillard as an underdog. He is a champion of willpower and, like a prizefighter, he perpetuates his own mythology.

Anthony Davis, on the other hand, has never won a playoff series. In his one playoff appearance, Davis averaged 31.5 points, 11 rebounds, and three blocks per game, but his team lost to the Warriors and so all was forgivable. That was three years ago. That was ancient history. Since then, Davis has stretched and improved his game and still managed to look diminished in the light of other unicorns. Maybe naming himself after the always out of style unibrow is the issue. His career to date is a statistical wonder but is at risk of being remembered as something quirky and anachronistic.

Playing in the small era he is at seven-feet tall the underdog. Playing without Cousins, however, has unleashed a wildfire. Davis is a prizefighter too. After an Achilles injury slayed Cousins, Davis carried his team to a 21-13 record, better than what they were with Cousins. In an age of slingshots and arrows, the big man is not giving up on spears.

Davis is now 25. Lillard is 27. These are two players in their small market primes. And they are positioned so similarly in regards to the league’s pecking order and in terms of individual accomplishments, the archetypal comparisons of their corporeal bodies –their literal size and stature — are rendered meaningless. Davis, after all, can step out to the perimeter, and Lillard is a daredevil in the paint.

The list of players one might choose to take a last-second shot before Lillard is a short one and the list of players who can play like Davis is possibly even shorter. The lines between what is outside and what is inside will surely blur with each possession in this series. But, as great as they are, the possibility exists that they simply cancel each other out.

Such a situation is likely, and if it occurs, then the efforts of a CJ McCollum for Portland or a Jrue Holiday for New Orleans are just as likely to turn the series. McCollum is probably more talked about, but always as the other half in one of the game’s best backcourts. Holiday, on the other hand, is a journeyman who has actually only played in two NBA cities, Philadelphia and New Orleans. These players, too, are playing the best ball of their careers and offer alternatives to the Lillard-Davis binary.

After all, as Dave Deckard observes at SBNation’s The Blazers Edge, results are more complicated than the statistics of a couple players.

New Orleans boasts the more efficient of the two offenses and will look to push the pace. Everything will be run through Davis, but the running will be guided by the underrated Holiday. Rajon Rondo will also surface, and ever the wildcard, he is sure to flash the old Celtic magic that keeps coaches and general managers under his spell. E’Twaun Moore and Nikola Mirotic may also have their good shooting nights, but aside from Davis and Holiday, a lot of what the Pelicans do is by a committee of incremental achievers.

Lillard and CJ McCollum are clearly the better backcourt offensively, with each averaging over 20 points per game. Both are capable of exercising escape artist spectacles on a nightly basis, but nothing in this series will be easy. The Pelicans boast capable defenders, and there will be nights when the Blazers scoring duo is matched by Davis (and company), when the locks can’t be picked and the stunt proves impossibly foolish. No need to worry, though. A series can be won by the team most likely to hit reset after encountering setbacks, and Lillard is always hitting reset, moving on, stepping back, and hoisting his body of work into the fray. He spits bars. Yank out the cartridge and blow.

On the New Orleans side of the ball, Moore and Mirotic are the players primarily responsible for stretching the floor and diversifying the offense. And yet, ultimately, the team relies on post play and fast break opportunities for most of its points. Such was the case with Cousins, and such is the case without him. Portland can limit New Orleans’ outside shooting—that’s what their defense does best, after all—, but the dietary staple of the Pelican offense isn’t to be found on the perimeter.

In such circumstances, one team’s strength takes away what the opposition has already conceded. In a tightly contested series, the two teams tend to mold one another and teams often end up having to play a slightly different style or tendency than they did in the regular season.

All this is to say that while adjustments will be made, there is probably little Portland can do to slow Anthony Davis. If Jusuf Nurkic steps out of the lane to guard either Davis (or even Mirotic), he is likely to resemble Glass Joe staggering from a right hook. His willingness to be the first fall guy in this series will be in and of itself endearing, if not the tipping point. After all, there probably isn’t a lot New Orleans can do to slow Lillard, even with Holiday’s grit and Rondo’s length.

The stars in this series will get theirs no matter what the others do, and while cameos will be had, how can this series not be about Davis and Lillard? When Al-Farouq Aminu wins Game 3 or 4, it will be difficult not to credit Lillard’s loyalty. And won’t the same be said of Davis’ leadership when Darius Miller chips in with his big playoff moment? The thing is it’s just hard to keep track of everybody when the shot clock sounds in the blink of an eye.

Who can win you a game? Who can win you a series?

These questions cast long shadows and whittle a player down to size. Of course, they can also springboard a career into folkloric hyperbole and 30 for 30 documentaries.

Next: We got Warriors-Spurs again, but not the way we wanted it.

In another era, it would be easier to depict Anthony Davis as Goliath and Damian Lillard as a shepherd boy—the game would be measured according to size and stature. In 2018, though, Goliath must learn to duck, and if he can do that, well, then David is obligated to respond. Maybe the conflict boils down to what the armies can do, and in that case, it’s important to remember the team with the home court was only one game better than the sixth-best team in the Western Conference.

Expect a series full of responses. Expect heroes to go unnamed.