On Sunday night, the Portland Trail Blazers saw their 13-point fourth-quarter lead against the Dallas Mavericks whittled down to one with just under two minutes to play. They had no momentum. No offensive flow. Luka Doncic was slicing their defense to pieces. It didn't look good.
Then Damian Lillard looked at his watch. It was time. Over the next minute, Lillard, who was struggling in the fourth quarter himself but has an amazing ability to just summon rhythm out of nowhere, scored seven straight points capped by this step-back 3-pointer that proved to be the game-winner with 32 seconds remaining:
This sequence served as a microcosm for the current state of the Blazers: Struggling to stay afloat, rescued by Lillard, who is playing superhero once again in keeping Portland in the thick of the Western Conference playoff picture despite injuries to CJ McCollum and Jusuf Nurkic.
Entering play on Tuesday, Portland sits as the West's No. 5 seed at 16-10 (that would be good enough for the No. 2 seed in the East, but that's another gripe for another day). It feels like a minor miracle considering the Blazers are a defensive doormat and Nurkic and McCollum have combined to miss 27 games, and it feels like a four-game losing streak is forever lurking around the corner.
But Lillard just won't let it happen. The Blazers operate on a razor-thin margin with exactly half of their games so far meeting the NBA's "clutch" criteria, meaning they are within five points with less than five minutes to play, and in those clutch minutes Lillard has scored 65 total points, second only to Zach LaVine, while shooting 58 percent from the field and 46 percent from 3. The Blazers, most importantly, have gone 10-3 in those down-to-the-wire games with a plus-29 point differential.
Kyrie Irving recently whined that all the odds are stacked against the Nets. Yes, he honestly said that. A team with Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving and James Harden is apparently swimming upstream. If Kyrie wants to know what swimming to avoid being sucked down the Western Conference whirlpool actually looks like, he ought to glance over at Lillard's predicament. With McCollum and Nurkic out, Lillard's second-best player is Gary Trent Jr. If you want to make Lillard's MVP case, that would be a good place to start.
McCollum's absence has been particularly felt. He was having a career year, and with him alongside Lillard, the Blazers were a terror down the stretch of games with two of the best self-creating closers in the world in the same backcourt -- No. 5 in both fourth-quarter scoring and point differential. With Lillard going it alone, those ranks have fallen to No. 24 and No. 29, respectively.
That's a statistical way of saying the Blazers are making a habit of either letting big third-quarter leads evaporate or digging fourth-quarter holes, but so far, Lillard -- and we'd be remiss to mention Carmelo Anthony's fourth-quarter fire fest in Portland's recent win over Philadelphia -- has been there to pull them out. Per ESPN Stats and Info, that 3-pointer Lillard hit against Dallas was his 33rd career go-ahead bucket with under a minute to play, which is the most in the league since he arrived in 2012-13.
There has been a Lillard load-management conversation happening within Blazers circles. In essence, the argument for not pushing Lillard too hard is the Blazers' season seemed on the verge of death when McCollum and Nurkic went down. But Lillard has kept it alive, 7-5 since McCollum went down and 6-2 over their last eight.
You cannot sit Lillard now. Over 26 games entering Tuesday, the Blazers have outscored their opponents 3,002 to 2,995. Do the math, and that's a seven-point differential, or about 0.2 points per game. That's one bucket. One free throw. Portland's margin for error is almost nonexistent, and Lillard scores those game-swinging points at a level few players, if any player, can match.
People will say Lillard burned out in the playoffs last season, and that if Terry Stotts doesn't want that to happen again this season, he'd better think ahead. For starters, I'm not sure Lillard completely burned out. He took the Lakers out in Game 1. The Lakers were just too much in the end.
But if he did burn out some, I would more attribute that to the two-week-Michael Johnson-200-meter sprint he had to go on just to get Portland into the play-in series vs. Memphis. If the Blazers can keep winning at a decent rate until Nurkic and McCollum return, they may find themselves with enough cushion to not have to red-line Lillard down the stretch while ending up with a more winnable first-round series.
From there, you take your chances. And with a healthy Lillard, McCollum and Nurkic, and a defense with the personnel to perhaps play above its statistical profile depending on the playoff matchup, they aren't the worst chances in the world.
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February 17, 2021 at 06:25AM
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Damian Lillard playing superhero again, making MVP case with undermanned Blazers in thick of playoff picture - CBS Sports
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