[ad_1]
On Sunday night, the Portland Trail Blazers saw their 13-point fourth-quarter lead over the Dallas Mavericks shrink to one with just under two minutes to go. They had no momentum. No offensive flow. Luka Doncic was cutting their defense into pieces. It didn’t look good.
Then Damian Lillard looked at his watch. It was time. Over the next minute, Lillard, who struggled in the fourth quarter himself but has an astonishing ability to summon the pace out of nowhere, scored seven straight points capped by that 3-point pullback that turned out to be the winner. of the match with 32 seconds remaining:
This streak served as a microcosm of the Blazers’ current state: struggling to stay afloat, rescued by Lillard, who plays superhero again to keep Portland at the heart of the Western Conference playoff image despite the injuries of CJ McCollum and Jusuf Nurkic.
Coming into play on Tuesday, Portland is the No.5 seed in the West 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 looks like a minor miracle considering the Blazers are a defensive doormat and Nurkic and McCollum combined to miss 27 games, and it feels like a four-game losing streak is still lurking around the corner.
But Lillard won’t let it happen. The Blazers are operating 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 minutes of clutch Lillard scored 65 points in total. , second only to Zach LaVine, while shooting 58 percent from the field and 46 percent from 3. The Blazers, more importantly, went 10-3 in these low-end games with a plus-29 point differential.
Kyrie Irving recently cried that the odds are against the Nets. Yes, he honestly said that. A team with Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving and James Harden apparently swims upstream. If Kyrie wants to know what swimming is like to avoid getting sucked into the vortex of the Western Conference, he should take a look at Lillard’s predicament. With McCollum and Nurkic out, Lillard’s second-best player is Gary Trent Jr. If you’re going to defend Lillard’s MVP case, that would be a good place to start.
McCollum’s absence was particularly felt. He had a year of career and with him alongside Lillard, the Blazers were a terror throughout games with two of the world’s best self-created farmers in the same backcourt – No.5 in both scorers in the fourth. quarter. and point differential. With Lillard going it alone, those ranks fell to ranks 24 and 29, respectively.
That’s a statistical way of saying the Blazers are making a habit of letting big Q3 prospects evaporate or digging holes in Q4, but so far, Lillard – and we’d be remiss to mention the Carmelo Anthony’s fourth quarter fire festival. during Portland’s recent victory over Philadelphia – was there to pull them off. According to ESPN Stats and Info, that Lillard hitting 3 points against Dallas was his 33rd career starting bucket with less than a minute to go, which is the most players in the league since joining in 2012- 13.
A conversation about handling Lillard’s charge has taken place in Blazers circles. In essence, the argument for not pushing Lillard too much is that the Blazers’ season seemed on the brink of death when McCollum and Nurkic fell. But Lillard has kept him alive, 7-5 since McCollum fell and 6-2 in their last eight.
You can’t sit Lillard down now. Over 26 games to come Tuesday, the Blazers have beaten their opponents 3,002-2,995. Do the math, and that’s a seven point differential, or about 0.2 points per game. It’s a bucket. A free kick. Portland’s margin for error is almost nonexistent and Lillard is scoring those game points at a level few, if any, can match.
People will say Lillard burned out in the playoffs last season, and if Terry Stotts doesn’t want that to happen again this season, he better think about the future. For starters, I’m not sure Lillard is completely exhausted. He knocked out the Lakers in Game 1. The Lakers were just too many in the end.
But if he burned a bit of it, I’d attribute that more to the two-week Michael Johnson-200-meter sprint that he had to go on just to bring Portland into the play-in series against Memphis. If the Blazers can continue to win at a decent pace until Nurkic and McCollum return, they may end up with enough cushion that they don’t have to line up Lillard on the red line while ending up with a more first-round streak. winnable.
From there, you try your luck. And with Lillard, McCollum and Nurkic in good health, and a defense with the staff to play perhaps above their statistic profile depending on the playoff game, these aren’t the worst odds in the world.
[ad_2]
Source link