Drawing off his wealth of playoff experience, Jason Kidd knows the hardest part of a playoff series is what’s next for the Dallas Mavericks.

"No matter if it’s 3-love, 3-1 or 3-2, the hardest thing to do in a series is shut the door," Jason said on Monday after the Mavericks won Game 5 of the Western Conference Quarterfinals. "We’re going to have our hands full up there in Portland."


Jason and the Mavericks will have to hold off Portland tonight to avoid a deciding Game 7 (Getty Images)

To Portland they go tonight for Game 6, looking to close out the series and clinch a spot in the Western Conference Semifinals against either the Hornets or the Lakers.

To win tonight, Dallas will first have to defy the odds. The Blazers and Mavs have met nine times this year between the regular season and postseason. In those nine meetings, the home team has won every game. The Mavs’ last win in Portland’s Rose Garden came on April 9, 2010. Jason had 12 rebounds, six assists and three steals in that victory. The Mavericks will have to control all three aspects of the game again tonight to win on the road.

It starts with the Dallas defense and managing the tempo of the game. In each of their wins during the series, the Mavs have held the Blazers under 90 points. In fact, the Blazers, who averaged 96.29 points per game in the regular season, are nearly 10 points below that in the first five games of the series. Portland currently sports the lowest scoring average of all playoff teams at 86.6.

On the offensive end, in Game 5, the Mavericks went back to the things that made them so successful during the season, among them, the transition two-man game between No. 2 and the Mavs’ shooters. Sebastian Pruiti of The Basketball Jones breaks down one such play between J-Kidd and JET during Game 5, which he highlighted as the "Savvy" part of his weekly Savvy/Shabby post:

After a terrible 4th quarter loss, the Dallas Mavericks needed to do just about everything perfect to not only guarantee a win, but to boost their confidence. In the middle of the second quarter, we saw Jason Kidd make a terrific play in transition that resulted in a wide open three-point shot for his teammate:

The play starts with Jason Terry getting possession of the basketball and sprinting it out to the corner. Jason Kidd fills the wing and gets the kick-out pass. The Mavericks now have a two-on-one advantage with Gerald Wallace trying to defend both Jason Kidd and Jason Terry.

Instead of taking the open shot, Kidd — who has been hitting shots this series — fakes the shot, selling the fake by bending his knees as if he is going to take the shot. This draws Wallace to Kidd, who then throws a pass to the wide-open Jason Terry. Terry is open in the corner, knocks down the three and gives the Mavericks the lead.

Zach Lowe of SI.com’s The Point Forward writes that the momentum of the series and the accompanying numbers heavily favor the Mavericks:

"The Mavericks have outscored the Blazers by 24 points combined over five games, Portland needed a borderline miracle to win Game 4 at home and Nate McMillan just hasn’t been able to pull enough winning lineups out of his versatile roster. That’s not his fault, really. The Blazers are thin, rife with inconsistent players, prone to spacing issues when both Andre Miller and Gerald Wallace are on the floor and are perhaps a bit too reliant on hitting perimeter shots."

According to Jason, the Mavs are treating Game 6 with the same urgency as Portland is, as Bryan Gutierrez of Mavs Fastbreak writes:

"At that point, the goal is solid execution and closing the game out. It is a must-win situation for the Trail Blazers, but the Mavericks point guard is looking at the situation exactly the same way. "They’re all must-wins," Kidd said at the conclusion of the team’s practice on Wednesday afternoon. "We’ve got to find a way to win on the road."

J-Kidd added that as long as the Mavericks remain focused and keep themselves in the game for the first 42 minutes, he knows they’ll have an opportunity to close it.

"

[Game 5] was a must win for us and now we have to find a way to win on the road. They’re a tough team at home. We’ve had a couple opportunities where we’ve had the lead [in Portland] and we let it slip away. The big thing is we have to play 48 minutes and give ourselves, with six minutes left, a chance to win."

Game 6 tips off at 9:30 CT and can be seen on TNT.

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