The Portland Trail Blazers turned their 24-point lead into a five-point deficit on Tuesday night, just over four minutes into play. This is what the NBA defines as clutch time – a game within five points with less than five minutes left. They just need to officially rename it, Dame Time.
During the next three minutes, Lillard pulled the Blazers off the ropes again before delivering a hail of haymakers on the point of six three-pointers – four of his own as he collapsed the defense and Gary Trent Jr. and Robert Covington wins. for two more when Portland defeated the Thunder 115-104 for its fifth consecutive victory. This setback over Lu Dort, who effectively sealed the match, was comical.
Lillard did the same with Dallas on Sunday, scoring seven points over one minute to secure a victory for the Mavs, which wiped out a 13-point deficit in the fourth quarter. This setback was the match winner with 32 seconds left.
These series serve as a microcosm for the Blazers’ current state: struggling to stay afloat, rescued by Lillard, who returns to his superhero ways to keep Portland in the Western Conference playoffs despite injuries to CJ McCollum and Jusuf Nurkic.
After Tuesday’s victory, Portland sits at 17-10 as the West’s No. 4 seed (that would be good enough for the No. 2 seed in the East, but that’s another problem for another day). It feels like a small miracle, as the Blazers are a defensive doormat and McCollum and Nurkic have missed 29 games together. It feels like a losing streak of four games hides around the corner forever.
But Lillard just does not want that to happen. The Blazers are working on a razor-sharp margin with more than half of their games so far meeting the NBA’s “clutch” requirements – meaning within five points with less than five minutes to play. In the final few minutes, Lillard now scored 74 points, the best in the league, while shooting 60 percent from the field, 56 percent from 3 and 100 percent (23-for-23) from the free-throw line. Most importantly, the Blazers were 11-3 up in the playoffs by a plus-40 point.
Kyrie Irving recently lamented that all the odds are against the Nets. Yes, he said it honestly. A team with Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving and James Harden apparently swims upstream. If Kyrie wants to know how to swim so as not to suck through the Western conference whirlpool, he needs to look at Lillard’s plight. With McCollum and Nurkic out, Lillard’s second-best player Gary Trent Jr. is out.
If you want to state Lillard’s MVP case, which becomes impossible to ignore, this would be a good start. The only player currently in the MVP conversation to play with less current talent is Stephen Curry, and even he may have a better top-to-bottom roster than what Portland currently plays with.
Nikola Jokic is at or near the top of everyone’s MVP list, though Lillard is higher in ESPN’s Real Plus-Minus, and just like the Nuggets, with a much better ranking than Portland at the moment, now two games worse is like the Blazers after falling to the Celtics on Tuesday night. The Bucks of Giannis Antetokounmpo, a loaded list, also have a worse record than the Blazers. Joel Embiid has Ben Simmons and Tobias Harris and the Sixers are still only half a game at Portland. LeBron James has, well, the Lakers.
It just can not be overestimated that Lillard does it without McCollum, whose absence is especially felt. He had a career year, and along with Lillard, the Blazers were a scare at stake, with two of the best self – creating locksmiths in the world in the same backfield – number 5 in both the fourth quarter and points difference. With Lillard alone, the ranks, which entered on Tuesday, rose to no. 24 and no. 29 dropped.
It’s a statistical way of saying that the Blazers are making a habit of evaporating big leads in the third quarter, like in OKC, or digging holes in the fourth quarter. But so far Lillard has been there to pull them out. According to ESPN Stats and Info, the three-point Lillard hit against Dallas was his 33rd career trophy with less than a minute to play, the most in the league since arriving in 2012-13.
There was a Lillard cargo management conversation in Blazers circles. The argument that Lillard is not being pushed too hard is that the Blazers’ season seemed on the verge of death when McCollum and Nurkic came down. But Lillard kept it alive, 8-5 since McCollum went down and 7-2 over their last nine.
You can ‘t sit down for Lillard right now. In more than 27 games played on Tuesday, the Blazers outscored their opponents 3,117 to 3,099. Do the math, and that’s a difference of 18 points, or about 0.66 points per game. This is a bucket. One release. Portland’s margin of error is almost inconsistent, and Lillard scores the points that move on the game, at a level that few players, if any player, can match.
People will say that Lillard burned out in the playoffs last season, and that if he does not want Terry Stotts to have it happen again this season, he better think ahead. To begin with, I’m not sure Lillard was completely burned out. He took out the Lakers in Game 1. The Lakers ended up being just too much.
But if he burned out a few, I would attribute it more to the two-week Michael Johnson 200-meter sprint he had to go on, just to get Portland into the playoffs against Memphis. If the Blazers can win at a decent pace until McCollum and Nurkic return, they could find themselves with enough cushion to no longer have to pull Lillard down on the point while gaining a more winning series in the first round. .
From there, you use your chances. And with a healthy Lillard, McCollum and Nurkic and a defense with the staff to perhaps play above his statistical profile, depending on the playoff game, this is not the worst chance in the world.