A look at three key numbers related to Saturday’s game at the Smoothie King Center between Portland and New Orleans (4 p.m., Fox Sports New Orleans, TNT, WRNO 99.5 FM):
100: Career NBA playoff games for Rajon Rondo when the jump ball is tossed today in New Orleans. The point guard is on an individual five-game winning streak in the postseason, having prevailed twice in 2017 as a member of the eighth-seeded Chicago Bulls vs. Boston. Rondo and Ian Clark are the only current players on New Orleans’ roster to have won a championship ring, with Rondo earning his as the starting point guard for the ’08 Celtics, who went 16-10 in the playoffs. That trip to the postseason accounts for roughly one-fourth of Rondo’s experience, but he also appeared in 24 games two springs later, as Boston reached Game 7 of the ’10 NBA Finals. For his entire postseason career, the 32-year-old has gone 58-41 entering Saturday’s chance to sweep Portland.
23-8: New Orleans record (including playoffs) since Feb. 10, a stretch that includes separate winning streaks of 10, four and now eight games. The Pelicans were 28-26 at one stage of the regular season and in jeopardy of missing the playoffs altogether, but have been one of the NBA’s hottest teams since the All-Star break. Portland was also among the league’s best squads for long stretches of the second half – highlighted by a 13-game winning streak that bridged February and March – but the Trail Blazers have cooled significantly lately. Starting with an April 3 loss in Dallas, Portland has gone 1-7, including a four-game losing streak and an 0-3 mark in this first-round series vs. New Orleans.
3: Separate 30-point scorers for New Orleans through three games of the series, with Anthony Davis (35 points in Game 1), Jrue Holiday (33 points in Game 2) and Nikola Mirotic (30 points in Game 3) reaching that plateau so far. In fact, those three players are all averaging at least as many points as Portland’s leading scorer (C.J. McCollum at 21.0 ppg). Davis is pacing the Pelicans with an average of 28.3 points, followed by Holiday at 23.3 and Mirotic at 21.0. In a rarity, the top four scorers for New Orleans are also all shooting at least 50 percent from the field, topped by Mirotic at 58.5. Davis (54.8), Holiday (53.4) and Rondo (50.0). Among the six Portland players who’ve taken at least 20 attempts from the field, only Al-Farouq Aminu (16/32, exactly 50 percent) has made half of his shots. Damian Lillard is just 18/55 from the floor, or just 32.7 percent.