With a week in the books, the playoffs only offer more questions

ByJ.A. ADANDE
April 29, 2016, 9:54 AM

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PORTLAND, Ore. -- "He's done."

Two different people with the same two words on the same subject: Chris Paul.

It appears the broken bone in his right hand will keep Paul out for the rest of the playoffs. What does that mean? Well, if we've learned from this postseason, it's that we don't know what anything means. The terms are too subject to change.

The  Golden State Warriors began the playoffs as the heavy favorites to win the championship. Then  Stephen Curry slipped and sprained his MCL and suddenly we wondered whether the Warriors could beat the Los Angeles Clippers in the next round. And now with the Clippers tied at 2-2 with the Portland Trail Blazers, Paul out and Blake Griffin hobbled by an aggravation of his left quadriceps injury, we don't know if the Warriors will even face the Clippers in the next round.

Let's not forget, there's still work to do for the Warriors to finish the first round against the Houston Rockets, who overcame a 3-1 deficit last season to beat the Clippers.

How is it possible that we know less after a week and a half than we did at the start of the playoffs? There's usually a certain order to the NBA postseason, which tend to adhere to form. The best players and the best teams move on. Not now. These are a pencil-only playoffs. Too much has changed over the past two days to give anyone confidence about predicting the next two weeks or the next two rounds.

What's past is not necessarily prologue, either. Last year, the Clippers split two playoff road games that they played without Paul. But that was with Griffin playing at a superstar level. Now Griffin can't even guarantee he'll play at all in Game 5 in Los Angeles on Wednesday.

"I'm not sure," Griffin said. "Tomorrow, I think we'll take a better look and hopefully go from there."

Asking Griffin to reproduce his 26 points, 14 rebounds and 13 assists from Game 1 of last year's Rockets series is probably asking too much. Asking him to match his 19-12-6 line from Game 1 of this series with Portland could be a stretch. On Monday night, he tried to take off the way he used to, when he dunked on people with reckless abandon. He got fouled by Mason Plumlee, didn't come anywhere close to throwing the ball through the hoop and soon found himself rubbing his quadriceps on the sideline and even heading back to the locker room to get checked out. He returned to the game, but his gait was noticeably affected.