SUMMARY
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Put on your armchair coach’s hat for a brief moment and place yourself in the shoes of the Golden State Warriors in this possession.
Kent Bazemore has the unfortunate task of picking up one Damian Lillard. If you particularly chose Bazemore’s shoes to be in, then good luck to you, unfortunate reader, because your job is to make Lillard – one of the most clutch performers in recent history, if not all time – miss a long-range dagger three.
But if you put yourself in the shoes of anyone else – whether it be Draymond Green, Stephen Curry, Andrew Wiggins, or even Warriors head coach Steve Kerr – you have a couple of choices to make.
The first choice: You send someone over – either Green, who will leave Carmelo Anthony alone on the strongside corner, or someone else from the weakside – to double Lillard and force him to pass the ball to someone else. Will you bank on anyone not named Damian Lillard to take the shot and to live with whatever the result may turn out to be?
Or the second choice: You let Bazemore do his best on Lillard. Sending someone else over to double – especially when there is no screen being set – will run the risk of an easy 4-on-3 numbers advantage that might be too much for the Warriors’ backline defense to handle.
Let’s see what the Warriors chose to do:
They chose the second option. No doubles were sent. The Blazers didn’t set a screen for Lillard, because that would virtually be escorting a double team toward him.
Maybe Green didn’t go over to double because that would leave a hapless backline defense outnumbered without the presence of one of the best help defenders in the league. Curry didn’t go over, because maybe that would’ve been an easy pass to Gary Trent Jr, a 40.8% three-point shooter. Andrew Wiggins may have been too far away to come over and put pressure in a timely manner.
No double. No frills. No complications.
Quite simply, it was Dame Time.
“We came up with a stop and I was pushing the ball in transition,” Lillard said after the game. “I knew that they had been trapping me pretty heavy all night, I was seeing bodies all night. Once I saw that it was [Bazemore] in front of me, I was looking at the backside and I saw [Green], I just knew that if I attacked the rim that he was going to come over and meet me at the rim.
“I knew that the opportunity for me to attack that early wasn’t there. I just tried to do a move to get [Bazemore] off of me, I lost the ball, recovered it. When I got the ball, I was just like I’m going to make him react to a move, get some space, and I’ll raise up for the three.”
NBA.com defines clutch period as the last 5 minutes of a game with the point differential being 5 points or less. No one has grabbed such a time period and claimed it as his own as much as Lillard has this season.
Lillard is putting up absurd numbers in the clutch: 92 points, second-most in the league behind only Zach Lavine; 61.4% from the field, first among 57 players who have taken at least 20 field-goal attempts in the clutch; 57.1% from three-point range (12-of-21), first among 17 players who have taken at least 15 three-point attempts in the clutch; a perfect 26-of-26 clip from the free throw line; and a win percentage of 72.2%, third-highest in the league.
It’s quite important to note that Lillard was not having one of his best games prior to his late 4th quarter explosion. Devoid of context, Lillard’s statline against the Warriors was, to put it mildly, subpar according to his lofty standards: 22 points, 5 rebounds, and 6 assists on 6-of-17 shooting from the field (35.3%) and 3-of-10 on threes (30%).
On the other hand, his Warriors counterpart in Curry finished with another statistically brilliant performance: 35 points, 7 rebounds, and 5 assists on 13-of-28 shooting from the field (46.4%) and 5-of-14 shooting on threes (35.7%).
Lillard had initial trouble from long range, starting out just 1-of-8 on threes and facing the same kind of treatment that Curry has often received from defenses on a nightly basis.
The Warriors know best how to defend Lillard – he is, after all, somewhat of a Curry doppelganger in terms of playing style, although not a complete clone by any means. But his ability to hit shots from anywhere on the floor necessitated a more aggressive approach.
The defensive strategy on Lillard was simple: get the ball out of Lillard’s hands and dare his other teammates to step up and make shots:
Lillard found it difficult at times to find his open teammates, and Green took advantage on several occasions, as seen from the sequence above. Wiggins and Kevon Looney trap Lillard off the screen, and Green does what he does best as a roamer on defense.
Lillard had limited success on drives as well. With his vision blocked by the long arms of relatively taller defenders, Lillard had difficulty kicking out to his teammates on the weakside:
With Green acting as the help-side defender once again, he helps James Wiseman defend Lillard’s penetration. Lillard sees Green coming over to help and tries to abort his scoring expedition, but Green gets his hands on the pass and forces the turnover.
Green’s ability to be that reliable backline defender – especially when guarding non-shooting threats, allowing him the freedom to act as basketball’s version of a free safety – is what makes trapping someone like Lillard a more feasible strategy.
The sequence above pans out almost the same exact way as the first clip: Lillard gets trapped, forcing him to pass to Enes Kanter in the paint, which is too predictable and too rote. Green easily intercepts the pass and forces another turnover.
With Lillard being the only source of consistent offense on the team due to CJ McCollum’s absence, the Warriors cutting off the Blazers’ scoring lifeline should’ve been the death knell for the Blazers, if not for the contributions of Lillard’s supporting cast.
Carmelo Anthony’s 22 points on an efficient 8-of-13 from the field provided some needed relief during Lillard’s pre-clutch period struggles.
Robert Covington chipped in 15 points and buried crucial shots that kept the Blazers in the game amid stretches where the Warriors were in danger of pulling away. Trent Jr scored 15 points of his own.
Enes Kanter made up for his glaring defensive deficiencies by putting up a double-double of 11 points and 14 rebounds.
Lillard’s teammates carried the load that has often burdened him for much of the season – a necessary burden, as evidenced by the fact that with Lillard on the floor, the Blazers’ offense improves by a whopping 14 points per 100 possessions. When the time came for him to finally step up do what he does best, he didn’t disappoint.
As clutch period arrived, Lillard’s figurative watch started ticking. It started off with him blowing past Wiggins for a layup:
And hitting this pull-up three as a response to a Curry layup during the previous possession:
After being fouled and making 2 free throws, Lillard would proceed to hit the go-ahead three over Bazemore, giving the Blazers a 2-point lead and a defensive stop away from notching a win over Curry and the Warriors.
The dagger over Bazemore was expected by many to be the ultimate manifestation of Lillard’s clutch nature, his offensive prowess taking over during a time when the Blazers needed their superstar to lead them to victory. What wasn’t expected, however, was that Lillard wasn’t finished with making clutch plays, this time on the side of the floor he isn’t known for:
With Lillard switching Curry off to his teammate and following Wiggins to the weakside, he takes on the role of the “low” man, whose role is to help on drives. When Covington bites on a Green pump-fake, Lillard immediately knows what to do. He steps just outside the restricted area, sets his feet, and takes the bump from Green.
“In our practices and film, coach Nate Tibbets is always talking about the lag,” Lillard said. “When the guy you’re guarding is leaving the strongside, [it’s important] to just make sure that you don’t chase him directly to the opposite corner or the opposite side of the floor.
“That became me, once I switched off of [Curry], my guy was running out to the opposite corner and I was the lag, so I kind of turned and took a peek at the action and watched how it developed. Once we ran Draymond off the line and he was coming downhill pretty fast, I waited a second to make sure he was going to commit to the rim, and once he did, I just stepped in.”
The call from the officials was a charge – it could’ve easily gone the other way, resulting in a three-point play and the Warriors snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. All the heroics would’ve gone for naught, with the Blazers heading into the All-Star break with a loss on their minds and with little momentum to start the second half of the season.
One failed coach’s challenge later, Lillard’s Dame Time legend lives on – as well as his growing MVP candidacy. – Rappler.com
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