New York Times: Damian Lillard’s Impossible Burden

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  1. Minstrel

    Minstrel Top Of The Pops Global Moderator

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    Damian Lillard’s Impossible Burden
    The Trail Blazers guard was having a career-defining postseason before running into the Golden State buzz saw. His season ended on Monday but his confidence never wavered.

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    By Benjamin Hoffman

    May 20, 2019

    It was not supposed to end like this for Damian Lillard and the Portland Trail Blazers. Not this year.
    Dealt what seemed like a fatal blow in March when Jusuf Nurkic, Portland’s indispensable inside presence, was lost for the season with a broken leg, the team somehow grew stronger. The Blazers entered the postseason ready to vanquish their playoff demons, and Lillard — so long in Golden State’s shadow and driven by a first-round exit last season — seemed up to the challenge.

    That feeling only grew in the first round when he almost single-handedly dispatched the Oklahoma City Thunder, a plucky (and star-studded) underdog that some had predicted would pull off an upset. The series was over in only five games, and the only question it left was which of its biggest moments would live longer in the memories of basketball fans: the impossible shot Lillard threw up to end Game 5, the wave he offered toward the Thunder bench, or the look of dispassionate determination on his face when TV cameras captured him in a pile of his celebrating teammates.

    Any one of the moments could be called iconic in its own right, but the look on Lillard’s face — all business at the center of a joyous, chaotic dogpile — served notice to the rest of the league that he was coming for them, as well.

    Suddenly, after Monday’s collapse by Portland — one that came in a series full of Portland collapses — Lillard was gone. His team had reached the conference finals, but it was once again swept away by a Warriors dynasty that, even short two All-Stars, simply had too many options for Portland to breathe. And it was Lillard — nursing a rib injury sustained in Game 2 — whom they suffocated the most.

    Through the first three games of the Blazers series, Golden State dared anyone but Lillard to beat them. The Warriors did so by throwing size and numbers at the 6-foot-3 Lillard, a four-time All-Star. If he got through the 6-foot-7 Klay Thompson, he had to deal with the 6-foot-6 Andre Iguodala; if he got through Iguodala, there stood Draymond Green, the most dominant defensive player of these playoffs, who is likely nowhere near his listed height of 6 feet 7 inches but plays as if he were well over 7 feet tall.

    “It’s like a next layer of defense that I’m paying attention to, so whereas I’m not, I guess, wanting to explode and get around that guy, because I see what’s waiting for me,” Lillard said of Green on Sunday. He added: “It’s tough.”

    Thanks in large part to Iguodala being out with an injury on Monday, Lillard found some room to breathe in Game 4. He scored 28 points, dished out 12 assists, and got some unexpected help from Meyers Leonard, who scored a career-high 30 points. But it wasn’t enough, as Golden State, which repeatedly fell behind, managed to win, 119-117, in overtime.

    The strategy to swarm Lillard worked to perfection. He came into Monday shooting a dismal 32.6 percent from the field and was scoring only 20.3 points a game — a steep drop-off from his average of 33 per game in the first round. But Leonard opened some space on the floor with terrific first-half shooting on Monday and Lillard shined for much of the game, only to come up just short. His 3-point attempt with 1.3 seconds left could not find its way through the basket even if Coach Terry Stotts let himself dream that his superstar had pulled out yet another game-winner

    “I thought it was going to — kind of meant to be,” Stotts said, struggling to sum up his emotions over the missed shot that ended his team’s season. “When he shot it, it had good arc. Yeah, I thought it had a chance.”

    Lillard knew coming into the game that a loss would be blamed on him regardless of the quality of his play. Dogged by questions about the rib injury sustained in a collision with Kevon Looney, he seemed frustrated with fans who expected him to single-handedly lift a team that he has carried on his shoulders so many times in the past.

    “I just think people want to see me doing it,” he said. “They want me to be making shots and doing all this stuff, but it’s different when you’re out there. Being a part of the game is different than somebody just watching.”

    In a basketball landscape in which legacies seem to be constantly re-examined, Lillard’s struggles are threatening to result in his being labeled a regular-season star who couldn’t lift his team in the playoffs. A Russell Westbrook, rather than a Kawhi Leonard.

    Portland’s season ending early once again can’t help in that regard, but seven years into his career, Lillard has proved to be nothing short of phenomenal. He just wrapped up his fourth consecutive season of averaging 25 or more points a game, he has perhaps the deepest effective shooting range of any player not named Stephen Curry and he has shown over and over again that he is the type of star who can thrive when pressure is at its highest. Yet he was inexplicably left off the All-Star rosters in both 2016 and 2017, and he has finished in the top five of the Most Valuable Player Award voting only once.

    And while his teams have, indeed, failed in the playoffs, even a glance at the rosters Lillard has worked with versus the rosters of the team’s he’s competed against — Portland is 1-12 in the playoffs against Golden State over the last four years — seems to be enough to take any asterisks off his stardom.

    Golden State’s players — even Green — said repeatedly on Sunday that they expected Lillard to come out firing in Game 4. They warned outsiders, and perhaps reminded themselves, that nothing should be seen as a foregone conclusion.

    Lillard, faced with a series deficit no N.B.A. team has ever overcome, against a team that many feel is unbeatable, showed no signs of quitting right up until the final seconds of overtime. His season was on the brink, but he had come into the day still believing the Blazers could find a way to win not just the game but the entire series.

    “You know, you look at the numbers and there’s a slim chance of you winning the series like that, but we’ve got a lot to play for,” Lillard said of coming back from a three-game deficit. “Obviously you never know when the first time it’s going to happen. We could be the first team to do it.”

    They fell short of that mark. But Lillard will be back. And if he ever gets the help he needs, the rest of the league could be in trouble.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/20/sports/damian-lillard-portland-trail-blazers.html
     
  2. wizenheimer

    wizenheimer Well-Known Member

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    a guy from NY gets it a lot better than a bunch of posters here
     
  3. TorturedBlazerFan

    TorturedBlazerFan Well-Known Member

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    Sucks reading this now just like it did an hour ago lol. Im bummed...
     
  4. BoomChakaLaka

    BoomChakaLaka Well-Known Member

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    Great year! So glad we had this Blazer team to cheer for. I think next year can be just as rewarding and more.

    Eventually the Warriors won’t be able to afford keeping their dynasty intact and when that door opens, this experience will allow the Blazers to rise to the occasion.
     
  5. wizenheimer

    wizenheimer Well-Known Member

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    there has been a lot of chatter about that and supposedly the Warrior owner has said he can afford 300M a year in salary and tax. The Golden State franchise almost prints money and their revenue will go up when they move into their new arena and start their new local media contracts

    in other words, don't hold your breath on the Warriors breaking up
     
  6. Chris Craig

    Chris Craig (Blazersland) I'm Your Huckleberry Staff Member Global Moderator Moderator

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    Then the Blazers need to get better and beat them the hard way
     
  7. tiredhunter

    tiredhunter Well-Known Member

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    Damn New Yorkers taking over Portland...
     
  8. Strenuus

    Strenuus Global Moderator Staff Member Global Moderator

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    The help he needs is having stotts gone.
     
    brooklynballer likes this.
  9. Orion Bailey

    Orion Bailey Forum Troll

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    At least they know how to write...
     
    Dougnsalem likes this.
  10. UncleCliffy'sDaddy

    UncleCliffy'sDaddy We're all Bozos on this bus.

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    It beats having the damn Californians take over........
     
  11. barfo

    barfo triggered obsessive commie pinko Staff Member Global Moderator

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    Or the Montenegrins. I hear they are very aggressive.

    barfo
     

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