In a normal year, an NBA team may take a week or two to settle in to the season after returning from a long break.

But this isn’t a normal year, and Portland Trail Blazers coach Terry Stotts knows his team doesn’t have time to get comfortable.

“We don’t have a luxury of not being focused and not being ready to play,” Stotts said Wednesday.

Upon the return of basketball on July 31, the Blazers will be immediately thrust into a playoff chase. There are only eight seeding games to play, and every one of them will take on the importance of playoff games after a four-month break.

Portland is currently the ninth seed, and its first game back is against the eighth-seeded Memphis Grizzlies.

The Blazers are 3½ games behind the Grizzlies and can force a play-in series if they remain within four games.

The Blazers leave for the Disney World bubble Thursday. Friday will be a quarantine day, though Stotts would like to have a team meeting that afternoon if allowed. Practice will begin Saturday.

“I think the league is doing something that’s obviously never been done before,” Stotts said. “I think we’re all really hopeful that we can pull it off. But you know there’s a little bit of anticipation, maybe a little bit of anxiety, but I think overall I’m really glad that we’re going to be a part of it.”

Stotts hasn’t heard from any of the players or coaches who already have arrived on the Disney World campus, but amid concerns over the regulations and the true safety of the bubble, Stotts is looking forward to getting there.

“I think it’ll be fluid, but it’s always going to be err on the side of caution, no question,” Stotts said of the rules in the bubble.

“But I think there will be questions that are brought up during the course of our stay that will have to be answered.”

There will be scrimmages held in the run-up to the real games, and Stotts wants to treat those like real games. If the Blazers are going to be allotted any sort of a tune-up period to get used to the new environment, those scrimmages are the only opportunity.

Each team has received renderings of what seating formats on the bench will look like in order to allow for distancing.

But once games start, Stotts wants to treat each game as if it were back in the Moda Center. He plans to have huddles and be as vocal as ever, trying to resemble some level of normalcy.

“I think the scrimmages are going to be dry runs for everybody,” Stotts said. “For game operations, for the scorer’s table, for the referees, everybody getting used to how the games are going to be run.”

Practices in Florida will allow for the resumption of contact, as the restrictions that existed for the team’s workouts in Portland begin to ease in the bubble.

The Blazers’ coaching staff has held meetings to discuss how practices may be adjusted in the bubble, how they will alternate harder and easier practices and what concepts should be prioritized. With big men Jusuf Nurkic and Zach Collins back, Stotts wants to focus on teaching defensive sets to take advantage of his team’s newfound health.

“We haven’t been that isolated in that we’ve been at the practice facility,” Stotts said. “We’ve seen each other. So, we haven’t been isolated where we’re not talking to people. The only contact we’re missing is on the court.”

Stotts said he doesn’t anticipate many distractions in the bubble. The environment is already so closed off and restricted, teams would be hard-pressed to find a distraction anyway. Blazers players have talked about playing video games and taking walks and mostly staying in their rooms. Each hotel will have its own amenities, like a walking path set up so players and staff can have activities without interacting with other hotel complexes.

The players won’t be able to visit each other’s rooms, though the team is all on the same floor, and still can congregate in some ways, Stotts said.

But any distractions that may have existed won’t likely be a factor anyway.

And that allows Stotts’ team to focus on being ready for July 31. There isn’t room for any error trailing Memphis and competing with the New Orleans Pelicans’ far easier schedule.

There isn’t any sort of home-court advantage, Stotts said, and that will be a better and maybe more equal test of each team.

That’s why he will lean on veteran players such as forward Carmelo Anthony, and his experienced star guards Damian Lillard and C.J. McCollum to help avoid a slow start.

Those players have been in big spots before, and even though neither Stotts nor any of his players knows exactly what to expect, having experience is something he sees as a potential advantage in such meaningful games.

“His experience, his demeanor, all those things, have a certain calm calming effect,” Stotts said of Anthony. “But I think going down there, he’s a hyper competitive person and I think once we get down there and go about our business, we know what we have to do.”