For the record, I watch every Blazers game. It's frustrating to watch shots go in that you are used to seeing drop but instead they bounce out. I trust in our team to turn things around and Dame will get through it. People keep picking on Nico, rightly so, but lets not treat Dame like a sacred cow. We keep losing games because Lillard is playing below average. We don't need crazy games from him, just his average. We can live with Nico's struggles, but not if Lillard is going to struggle too. P0rtland is 2-8 in their last 10 (now losing to the Bucks, badly too). If you could dial in Dame for 22pts, 6asst, and 4reb in all those games then we would have beat ATL, CLE, and LAC. That would be 5-5 in the last 10 but those wins would have been BIG. Too bad stats don't play for you.
BTW, against the bucks he had 6 turnovers, 32% from the field, and 10% from 3. His 6 of 7 from the line, 3 steals, and 9 assists are the only look good but it took 38 minutes and most of that time was being down 10-20 points. The game was a borderline blowout. Get the boy some rest!
The shot selection for the whole team has been pathetic lately, but damn, Dame really needs to stop CHUCKING the three ball. If his shot is off this much, I'd actually like to see him focus on distributing and creating a few more assists per game.
So now they got a "Lillard Tracker thread"? Lets all just bash on Lillard now shall we? Heck it's working so well for the Batum tracker thread.
LOL! Really, I just scanned my DVR and counted 6 times in the first quarter alone Dame was outside the 3pt line looking to get around his defender when a second defender would step up. 6 times he was double teams outside the 3pt line in the 1st quarter. thats not smothering? Hell of alot more smothering than he saw when he was lights out earlier in the season. Not saying Dame is playing top game. He is def. slumping, but lets give some credit to other teams focusing more on him now?
It's not smothering when our offense invites the double team with a poor screen to a pop or roll that has no intention of getting the ball. If anything, our offense is smothering Dame.
I had a coach years ago that had a theory on how to defend against top guards. I won't say PGs because the term had not been invented at that time yet. As it turned out, I did not end up getting a chance to play much for this coach, but that was another story. So I ended up Coaching an Armed Services team and scouting games of the opposition teams this coach would face. The theory he had about guards and how to defend them was rather simple and logical. You divide the by the number of assists they create by number of shots they miss and if the result is less than one, you pressure the guard hard when he is handling the ball. If the result is greater than one, then you defend the guard when handling the ball in a normal one on one way but attempt to pressure him to go where he does not intend to go, if you have scouted the tendencies. The key here is to have the other players take away his passing lane since his preference is to pass for the assist rather than shoot. When scouting then you needed to identify the passing lanes that could be closed and still have defensive integrity. Not all that easy. Damian is easy to set a defensive plan to stop, his plan is to shoot. If he does pass, it usually is to Lamarcus for a long shot or to Wes for a long ball. And there are several player on the team he does not pass to at all. So go ahead and double team him perhaps even triple and take your chances. You shut down the prime ball handler and the next to top scorer with double team, this will normally produce a win. It is much more difficult to plan a successful defense against the guard that comes in over 1.2 in this formula. Rod Strickland and Dave Twardzik were the only Blazers to do it. John Stockton and Magic Johnson were the best in the NBA history. (TP was a bit over 1)
One more thought on Dave Twardzik. Ramsay had him come in and run the offense when resting Walton who was the hub of the offense normally. When he sat then DT would run his assist generating game and that made the Champs real hard to defend, two games on the opposite ends of the basketball spectrum. Of course, both were on the floor when Ramsay wanted to scramble the look, very effectively.
Face it folks! It took two years and change but Lillard has finally hit the rookie wall! Now he'll get a chance to snap out of it!
He'll be alright. I will say it is quite unusual for a player on the level of Dame to have this long of a drought but I wonder if the Currys, CP3s, etc had any long slump like this any point of their careers
ESPN radio sports updates keeps playing a clip of Tim Legler saying that he thinks Lillard is the best PG in the league.
