Blazers' Harkless: Warriors know we can beat them

There are two ways for the Portland Trail Blazers to process their Game 1 loss to the heavily favored Golden State Warriors.

The glass-half-empty approach is that Damian Lillard and C.J. McCollum dropped a collective 75 points and the Blazers still lost, or you could see the glass as being half full like Moe Harkless chooses to.

"We know we can beat these guys," Harkless told Jon Becker of The Mercury News. "And we feel like they know it, too."

Harkless' bold comment aligns with the optimistic outlook given by Lillard, when he predicted the Blazers to win in six games over the Warriors at the outset of the series. Lillard later clarified that the prediction was made somewhat in jest, but nevertheless he was confident in an upset.

However, the results don't quite match Portland's hubris. The Blazers have held leads in many of their recent meetings with the Dubs but have ultimately come up woefully short. The Warriors have won all five meetings between the two sides this season on the heels of their 4-1 series victory in last year's playoffs.