Here you go, this gives you the view of the floor. Pretty damn impressive with his regular shooting stroke and going three for three like that.
So does he just pull up and take this shot every time it's open now? Because there's just going to be so much space to work with if somebody has to man up on him way out there. Also, Dame is going to be in the NBA until he's 43 or so. Even when he loses his speed and athleticism and becomes a role player, with that kind of crazy range he can just camp up there and wait for kickouts and just completely distort defenses. Imagine having a specialist like him on your team that instantly creates ridiculous amounts of spacing on every play.
Every season he's pushing it further and further out. I guarantee we see some regular looking jumpers go down from beyond half court this season and not at the end of a clock. This guy, if we can exploit the traps that will now have to come all the way out to before half court, he will kill other teams. If we play this right and so many in here are correct about CJ's ability to run a team then CJ will get to run a really good team four on three until they just concede the one on one match up with Dame and then it's lights out. Man, if we can just get that pass out of the trap down correctly with RoCo and Jones improving our defense... we could be really really scary for everyone including the Lakers. I really just hope that half of training camp practices are Dame getting trapped really early by RoCo and Jones... practicing getting the ball to CJ and Nurk in great positions to make quick decisions to take advantage of the 4 on 3. The other half just working on our defense. I mean our offense could become extremely simple. Dame shoots and hits long shots until his guy over commits to stop the bleeding, then Dame starts blowing by him giving us a 5 on 4 advantage that we exploit. Then teams start sending out an extremely high trap that we exploit into a 4 on 3 advantage. If Dame is off that night then we just run our half court offense which although it's rudimentary is still one of the best in the game. Lastly but probably most important and difficult we have to stop the other team from scoring a ton.
Got to be help from the boxing training he does. Tremendous upper body strength and precision. Fuck, ask me to shoot anything like that for a new Chrysler and it's a baseball throw with a running start that lands at the free throw line. I hope to holy hell he does one of those this year. #president_lillard
Curry and Lillard have completely changed the game in the NBA. I'm not sure if it's a good thing or not, but it sure is exciting to watch Dame launch deep threes!
Had the opportunity to chat with a member of an NBA coaching family. His thoughts on the Blazers and how they deal with traps was quite interesting. He said the Blazers have tried over the years everyone on the roster to set a screen for Dame when the other team is going to trap....except one player, CJ. He thought that might be interesting to try. If they do trap, your next best ball handler is immediately available and wide open for the pass instead of giving it to someone like Nurkic 25' from the basket or a wing who can't handle like Aminu, Harkles, or the incoming RoCo or DJ. If they don't trap, you create a switch and now the defense may be slightly out of position and again you have created an advantage for Dame. Interesting discussion that covered quite a few things but that seemed most appropriate to the discussion.
You know why the league calls him Logo Lillard? The alternate version doesn't sound as G-rated. Deep Dame.
