People complain about this with all ball-dominant players (except maybe LeBron). I know Knicks fans complain about it with Melo. Houston with Harden. Even the Lakers with Kobe at times.
Lillard can get into "good scoring position" quite easily - thanks to his range extending out about four feet past the three-point line. What I appreciate about Lillard - and someone else mentioned this already - is that he gets his points while helping spread the floor, share the ball, and make the defense move. A lot of B-Roy's points came in iso plays, or in situations in which other players had precious little to do. That said, I don't think Ron Artest was kidding when he said Roy was the toughest player in the league for him to guard. Roy was deceptively strong, deceptively quick, confident in his moves, very good at drawing fouls, and underrated as an outside shooting threat (especially late in games). He wasn't a bad defender, when healthy, either (on that score, I'd say he's better than Lillard). I think it's too early to judge whether Lillard is at Roy's level yet. He's got that potential, but until he leads the Blazers to the playoffs, he's not there yet.
For my money Roy > Dame minus the injuries though. Roy was a franchise player. Dame is... kind of but not in the superstar way BRoy was at. Maybe he'll get there.... but there are several players like him in the league. Roy was a unique player witth a particular set of skills. hoop fam
There's no similarity. Roy was an Adrian Dantley-like SF playing at guard. Lillard is a little 6-2 guy who could shoot last season, but not this season so far.
I think Roy was the better player. In time that can change. I also kind of think they both are/were overrated by Blazer fans and maybe league wide.
Love Dame, but Roy, when healthy, was a top10 almost top5 NBA player, and the 2nd best SG in the league behind Kobe (yes i think during his best year, he was better than Wade)
Still way too early into the season, but if Dame plays at this level all season, he will have had a better second season than Roy did.
Roy has had way more opportunities to be clutch. But Lillard in his small sample size, has had at least 5 clutch (end of quarter/game) shots I can think of right off the top of my head. The kid is pretty damn clutch.
Bull. Before his last bad game his shooting percentage as well as his 3p% was vastly improved from last season at 44% and 42% respectfully.
100 points, 20 assists, 25 rebounds, and 20 3 pointers in his first 5 games. Yeah, he cant shoot this season. Bench him.
The thing about Roy that will always just baffle me is how he went from All-Star to a liability in such a short period of time. Allen Houston had somewhat of a similar thing with his knees, but he still was able to play into his 30s. Either Roy was playing through incredible pain for much of his NBA career, or his is a medical case that should be examined for the ages. Edited to add that Allen Houston was nowhere near the player, pre-injuries, that Roy was, ever.
I suspect a lot of it was pain. By the end, Roy had no meniscus left in either knee, and that robbed him of all his athleticism. Roy might not have seemed like a guy who needed a ton of athleticism, but it took away his first step, it took away all his lift when he would drive to the hole, and it slowed him down to the point where he simply couldn't do the things that he wanted to. Roy was never really a pure shooter, so he used his quickness to get pull-ups and fade-aways, but with both knees gone, he was super slow. Much easier to guard.
