Damian Lillard has gone a long way to becoming an NBA superstar. Well, let me rephrase this: he’s gone a long way to being universally recognized as a superstar. It actually has been for a while. But it was only recently, perhaps as recent as last season, that the masses became fully aware of its powers.
Because? Learn about the history of the small market. He plays in Portland. He has never been to the finals. He has never won a scoring title or an MVP. After Lillard missed two late free throws (we’ll be hit by this in a second) that could have won a crucial match for Portland on Saturday, he had a back and forth with Paul George and Patrick Beverley, both of which, Lillard rushed. as a reminder, they were sent home in the playoffs courtesy of a female buzzer winner.
“Keep switching teams,” Lillard told George. “Running away from the routine.”
Lillard has never escaped the routine of trying to take a small-market team to the top of the league. He didn’t ask for a swap in Portland, like George did in Indiana, nor did he press for half of his team to be swapped elsewhere to bring another star, like LeBron James did with the little Lakers. He stayed on the long road. The difficult road. And it cost him the broadest conversation of the greatest players in the world, of which Lillard is definitely one, even though his name is still rarely mentioned with the LeBron, Kevin Durants and Steph Currys of the world.
When you really think about it, LeBron and Curry are the only active players who have single-handedly raised a higher franchise than Lillard raised the Blazers. LeBron did it in his first stint with the Cavs, leading a bunch of rag-tags to the finals. But when he learned he needed better teammates to win, he left. Lillard never did. He’s trying the Curry road to win a title for the organization that enlisted you, with no outside superstar reinforcements joining the party.
Curry’s 2015 title with Golden State serves as Lillard’s landmark. It was before Durant turned the Warriors into a super team, when Curry had a very good running mate in a young Klay Thompson, as Lillard did with CJ McCollum, but no All-Stars mates (at the time) to lean on.
Lillard is even more difficult because he doesn’t have Draymond Green. The Blazers have never been a league-level defense during Lillard’s tenure, and they don’t have a four-man director of the caliber of Green, a guy who can punish teams for high blitzes and double teams as a release valve. leading 4 on 3 half-court advantages, forced Lillard to try to do more himself. A few years ago he received a tough lesson against Jrue Holiday and the Pelicans. A man cannot do everything. But Lillard can get pretty damn close.
This is a guy who can now score 40 points and hit nine or 10 3-pointers in his sleep. He’s a guy who can turn a first half of 2 by 8 into a blast of the second half with a flick of the proverbial switch, almost as if he takes a point in every game where he decides it’s enough. And then it turns into a blowtorch. Only because he feels like it.
It makes it seem so easy to get away from a 30-foot streak out of dribbling we expected. We are shocked, in fact, when it doesn’t. When Lillard shorted those two free throws on Saturday, with the Blazers behind the Clippers by one and 18.6 seconds to play, it was one of those eye-rubbing moments. Did I really see it?
This is where Curry came in in his consecutive MVP seasons, where we were no longer surprised when he would hit shots of such ridiculous difficulty that they would have seemed impossible before normalizing them. It’s as if James harden wins 50. LeBron and his triple doubles. Luka Doncic is doing the same thing right now, lulling us into the belief that he will continue to play at this level every single game for the next 20 years. And it probably will.
Only the greats make us expect greatness, and then keep those expectations game after game, season after season. Even for the best players in the world, the shots that Lillard can create and do with such consistency aren’t even close to normal, but damn me if he doesn’t lull me into believing these stunts he does are routine. I can open a game towards the end of the third quarter and see the Blazers down 20, and I have absolutely no doubt that Lillard – and to be honest, McCollum too – will get them back in the lead at some point. Maybe in about five minutes.
So yes, Lillard missed a couple of free throws on Saturday. And the Blazers have lost. And their post-season prospects have become more dangerous. And I was, and still am, completely shocked. All of this only reinforced the absolute icy fact that Lillard is at the top end of superstars, where the margin for error is zero. Where nothing but size is an option.
