On Sunday night, the Portland Trail Blazers saw its 13-point lead in the fourth quarter against the Dallas Mavericks reduced to one with just under two minutes left. They had no impulse. No offensive flow. Luka Doncic was cutting his defense to pieces. It didn’t look good.
Then Damian Lillard looked at his watch. It was time. In the next minute, Lillard, who was struggling in the fourth period but has an incredible ability to summon the pace from nowhere, scored seven consecutive points culminating in this 3-point step back that proved to be the winner of the game with 32 seconds remaining:
This sequence served as a microcosm for the current state of the Blazers: Struggling to stay afloat, rescued by Lillard, who is playing the superhero once again by keeping Portland in the middle of the Western Conference playoff, despite CJ’s injuries. McCollum and Jusuf Nurkic.
Coming into play on Tuesday, Portland sits as seed # 5 in the west at 16-10 (that would be good enough for seed # 2 in the east, but that’s another complaint for another day). It seems like a small miracle, considering that the Blazers are a defensive doormat and Nurkic and McCollum have lost 27 games together, and it seems that a four-game losing streak is always lurking.
But Lillard is simply not going to let that happen. The Blazers operate on a narrow margin with exactly half of their games so far meeting the NBA “clutch” criteria, meaning they are within five points with less than five minutes to play, and in those clutch minutes Lillard scored 65 points in total, second only to Zach LaVine, while throwing 58 percent of the field and 46 percent of 3. The Blazers, more importantly, were 10-3 in those down-to-the-wire games with a difference of 29 more spots.
Kyrie Irving recently lamented that all the odds are against the Nets. Yes, he said that honestly. A team with Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving and James Harden is apparently swimming against the current. If Kyrie wants to know what swimming is really like to avoid being sucked into the whirlwind of the Western Conference, he should take a look at Lillard’s situation. With McCollum and Nurkic out, Lillard’s second best player is Gary Trent Jr. If you want to defend Lillard’s MVP case, it would be a good start.
McCollum’s absence was particularly felt. He was having a career year and, with him alongside Lillard, the Blazers were a terror at the end of the games with two of the best self-creating closings in the world on the same backcourt – No. 5 in both goals from the fourth period and differential point. With Lillard going alone, those ratings dropped to No. 24 and No. 29, respectively.
This is a statistical way of saying that Blazers are making a habit of letting big tracks in the third quarter evaporate or dig holes in the fourth quarter, but so far, Lillard – and it would be remiss to mention Carmelo’s fourth quarter fire festival. Anthony in Portland’s recent victory over Philadelphia – was there to take them out. According to ESPN statistics and information, that 3-point hitting Lillard against Dallas was his 33rd career win with less than a minute to play, which is the highest in the league since he arrived in 2012-13.
There was a conversation about Lillard cargo management going on in Blazers circles. In essence, the argument for not pushing Lillard too much is that the Blazers’ season looked on the verge of death when McCollum and Nurkic fell. But Lillard kept him alive, 7-5 since McCollum fell and 6-2 in the last eight.
You cannot sit Lillard now. More than 26 games coming in on Tuesday, the Blazers beat their opponents from 3,002 to 2,995. Do the math and that’s a seven point spread, or about 0.2 points per game. This is a bucket. A free throw. Portland’s margin of error is almost nonexistent, and Lillard scores those decisive points at a level that few, if any, players can match.
People will say that Lillard ran out in the playoffs last season, and if Terry Stotts doesn’t want that to happen again this season, it’s better to think about the future. To begin with, I’m not sure if Lillard has completely run out. He eliminated the Lakers in Game 1. The Lakers were awesome in the end.
But if he ran out a little, I would attribute that to Michael Johnson’s two-week 200-meter sprint that he had to go through just to get Portland into the play-in series against Memphis. If the Blazers manage to continue winning at a decent rate until Nurkic and McCollum return, they may find themselves with enough cushioning not to have to score Lillard in the final stretch and end with a more viable first-round series.
From there, you take the risk. And with a healthy Lillard, McCollum and Nurkic, and a personal defense to perhaps play above your statistical profile depending on the playoff confrontation, these are not the worst chances in the world.