Rap extraordinaire, All-NBA point guard, Rookie of the year, selfless giver, and conference semifinalist. Damian Lillard has had an illustrious career both on and off the court thanks to his excellent shooting with the ball in his hands and magnificent talents in the music industry. Despite all this, somehow, Dame finds a way to stay out of the spotlight, even when he’s killing his opponents on the hardwood.
This season is no different. Well, it’s a little different, because Lillard is playing better than he ever has before.
He’s been so impactful this season on the Trail Blazers roster that finding the perfect place to start is challenging. Arguably the most impressive thing Lillard has done is lead his team to wins. As of November 28th, Portland is 13-8, 4th in the Western Conference only behind the juggernauts; San Antonio, Golden State, and Houston. Lillard and his 5.4 net rating have much to do with that.
His biggest improvement over any other season has been at the free throw line. He donates to charity off the court, and he gets to the charity stripe on the court. His free throw attempt rate sits at 40.6 percent, a career high by almost four percent. Once he gets to the line, he’s been money, as usual. He is currently knocking down freebies at the highest rate of his vocation at 92.6 percent.
Once he gets going to the rim, he’s impossible to stop; his bag of tricks is more filled than a kid’s bag of candy on Halloween. He can score from anywhere, so the shot fake and head fake can be used to create space, and once you’re slightly off balance, he burns you with a sweet dribble move. He shimmies past all of the Bucks here and gets to the rim, where he draws a shooting foul by getting a tough shot up over the post defender:
It’s almost like he’s dancing. He puts the cross on Middleton, burns him with a hard dribble, pulls back and head fakes to hesitate, gets by him with a spin, explodes to the rim, and gets fouled once it’s clear he is going to score. It was a beautiful sequence from Lillard, and it led to points for his team. This is a frequent result, his 7.2 made free throws per game is second in the league to only James Harden, as of November 28th.
It’s even crazier that he’s so good at getting to the line when you consider that fouling Lillard around the rim is the worse option when compared to just half contesting his shots. He’s shooting 58.1 percent from 0-3 feet, good for 1.16 points per shot. His 92.6 free throw percentage yields 1.85 points per trip to the line. Seems like an easy decision for me. But it’s not.
If you don’t foul him, or contest the shot significantly, he can either try to score his substantially easier look at the rim or he can dish to a teammate. When you don’t foul or have a man waiting under the basket, this happens:
That didn’t work, Memphis. Option A of contesting the shot hard and fouling doesn’t work. Option B of hardly contesting at all didn’t work. How about option C, a strong but not too strong contest with contact?
Nope. Lillard will just dish to a cutter for an easy bucket. He’s been handing out the rock to everyone this year; his 30.1 percent assist percentage is the second-best mark of his career. This is what happens when you go with option C, its an easy layup for a player other than Dame:
And it’s not just nasty passes around the rim that prop Dame’s assist numbers up. He’s a crafty passer all over the court capable of finding the open man in any situation. If a fellow Trail Blazer even gets a split second opening, Dame will rocket a pass into a tight window to create an easy opportunity.
This one here is poetry in motion. After drawing two defenders from a screen, Lillard waits until the split second that Garrett Temple leaves his position as the weakside help man on the roll. In the exact moment that Temple leaves Nurkic, Lillard drops him a perfect pocket pass for the layup:
Like with Lillard at the rim, options in situations like that are limited when trying to contain Lillard. You have to prevent a CJ McCollum wide open three on the opposite wing, you can’t let Nurkic get an easy bucket at the rim, and you need to contain Lillard, a career 37 percent three-point shooter, get a good look from deep. It’s a nearly impossible situation to defend, and that all falls on Lillard’s excellent ball handling and decision making.
And things could be even scarier. Lillard is averaging 25.7 points per game as of November 28th, good for seventh in the league. He is doing that while shooting a career-low percentage from long range at just 33.1 percent. A career low, and yet he’s still averaging nearly 26 points every night. Imagine what his scoring average would be if he was knocking down his career average rate from three?
Well, you don’t have to imagine; I’ll tell you. If Dame was making 36.8 percent of his threes, he would be averaging 26.6 points per game, which would be fifth in the league. Looks like this one will go down for Lillard more often as the season goes on:
That’s a great look, and a shot the Blazers want Damian Lillard taking. They will drop eventually, and then Lillard will be even more devastating.
While still being a star on the offensive end, Lillard is revolutionizing his play on the defensive end at the same time. He currently is having his second best season in steal percentage, a career-best season in block percentage, and he’s having far and away his best ever season in defensive rating, which is down to 103 as of November 28th.
The best offense is a good defense, and Dame is learning that in the best way possible. Take this clip for example, where Dame does it all. He fights over the top of a Nikola Jokic pick and roll to stop Jamal Murray from shooting. Then, he drops on the switch to prevent an easy pass to Nikola Jokic in the lane. Murray tries the pass anyway, and Lillard deflects it away for the steal, which ends up in his hands.
Once he has the ball, he pushes in transition. once he scans the floor, he makes a perfect look-ahead pass to Maurice Harkless for a layup, completing the whole cycle of defense to buckets:
Defending a pick and rolls with two or three players can be challenging. Lillard does it by himself and pushes for a bucket on the other end.
For much more simpler defensive plays, Damian Lillard has been getting more blocks than ever. He has nearly doubled his previous career high in blocks per game so far this season, and he has his athleticism to thank for that. He was having absolutely none of the Klay Thompson transition layup:
Combining his offense with his defense shows how dominant he’s really been this season…
well, almost. His clutch stats are also bananas. His true shooting in clutch situations (<5 minutes to go in a game and with the score within 5 points) is 67.9 percent, insane efficiency that is even crazier when the pressure is on.
That clutch scoring has propelled Damian Lillard to a 12.4 net rating in the clutch, insane numbers at any point in a season. When Portland has the ball late in games, they give it to Dame and let him work. It often leads to plays like this, which I’m sure you’ve already seen:
Damian Lillard is doing it all this year. He’s working defenders on offense, he’s snatching the ball on defense, and he’s doing it all in the clutch. Like Dame himself told us at the end of that clip, it’s Lillard time.
(all stats as of 11/28/17)
