Damian Lillard’s talent has made him a star, but he’s lacking the type of commercial presence that might have made him an All-Star. Credit: Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports

I’m not exactly sure who started it. I know that Marc Spears of Yahoo Sports introduced the idea of Damian Lillard as a possible All-Star last month. I know that some people took up the cause and ran with it, so much so that Damian was asked about the potential of being an All-Star reserve after a couple of games last month, and that after the All-Star reserves were announced and Damian wasn’t among them some other people called snub.

Let me go on the record with this: Damian Lillard is not an All-Star this year. He will be at some point; he just isn’t right now.

But just because Dame’s non-selection isn’t a snub doesn’t mean Portland’s potential Rookie of the Year doesn’t warrant consideration. And because of that consideration, it’s important to talk about what exactly makes one an All-Star, and why some NBA players have been asked to participate in All-Star festivities in their first season as a pro and others haven’t.

Before we go into all that, though, it’s necessary to illuminate what the All-Star Game is really all about.

In classic Wikipedia fashion, the NBA All-Star Game is described as “An exhibition game hosted annually by the National Basketball Association, matching the league’s star players from the Eastern Conference against their counterparts from the Western Conference. It’s the featured event of All-Star Weekend.”

All-Star Weekend is much more than just a vehicle for the All-Star Game, which in turn is much more than a meaningless exhibition game. All-Star Weekend is about putting together a promotional package for the league as a whole at a time when the eyeballs of the American sports fan are exceedingly vulnerable.

The NFL and Major League Baseball are the two most popular professional leagues in the United States. Summer and fall belong to the MLB. Fall and winter is the domain of the National Football League. As one is winding down, the other is getting ready to start. The Super Bowl was two weeks ago; pitchers and catchers report for Spring Training this week.

Sandwiched between the NFL and the MLB is the NBA. Its fan base, as far as it really matters, is pretty niche. Diehards keep the thing on its feet at all. That doesn’t mean David Stern and his crowd want to give up on the millions, or even billions, of dollars that are up for grabs on television deals, season tickets, and merchandise, though. Expansion is the name of the game. Getting people in the fly-over states (places where there are no professional basketball teams) to care about the NBA, and show that they care by ordering a premium cable package or another Kobe Bryant jersey, is the prime directive of the office of the commissioner.

Enter All-Star Weekend and its marquee event the All-Star Game.

Sure it’s good clean fun watching all the best players in the NBA on the court at the same time. Sometimes, even, the All-Star Game has an impact on basketball culture (the 1992 All-Star Game for instance). But more than anything, the game itself and the affiliated events serve as an advertisement for the league.

So does that mean that I think the All-Star Game is without significance, or worse a fraud? Not at all. I think the exact opposite, in fact. The All-Star Game is one of the more important things that takes place in any given NBA season, and it needs to be great every year.

Casual fans have trouble staying hooked on the NBA for the 82 games each team has to play, but a rousing mid-season game featuring all the marquee players in the league can pique the interest of some who might not have tuned in back in November or December while sustaining the interest of those few couple-times-a-month fans who might have been leaning towards bowing out in early February when the narratives get thick and indecipherable and some of the play starts to slow down in the long preparation for the stretch run. A lackluster All-Star Game does not accomplish those very important ends.

We all know that the fans select the 10 guys who start the All-Star Game. The criteria for how non-starters get selected are a little less cut and dry. Sometimes one outlier type season is good enough to get asked. Sometimes it’s a collection of good seasons building to a better or a really good season that gets a guy in. Sometimes it’s getting the ever popular brand-tag of “the next big thing.”

And it’s “the next big things” that often get invited to the All-Star Game as rookies. When you’ve got a guy who from day one is primed to be a superstar, you don’t hold out on the people, especially if you want that guy to help you sell stuff on TV.

The last three rookies to play in the All-Star Game were (in reverse chronological order for oldest to most recent) Tim Duncan, Yao Ming, and Blake Griffin. Apart from being frontcourt players, these three guys have a lot in common.

Tim Duncan entered the league in 1997, had an immediate impact, and very easily lived up to the hype that came with him from Wake Forest. The Big Fundamental has always been those two things, big and fundamentally sound. He might not ever sell the most jerseys, but he was a big deal player from the day he showed up. He was a talent that needed to be recognized, spoon-fed to the masses if it had to come to that.

Yao Ming is the most interesting case among this group of three, and might go the furthest to emphasize the importance of branding with regards to the All-Star Game. By no means did Yao blow people away in his rookie season. He succeeded, there’s no doubt about that, but his impact on the court didn’t outpace his importance off the court, at least not right away. But that off the court stuff was much, much more important any way. And it’s what got him into the All-Star Game.

China is the golden goose. Not just of the NBA, but for all American enterprises that want to continue thriving and printing money for the next century. There was absolutely no better way to sell the NBA to China that through a player like Yao Ming. Ballots for the 2003 All-Star Game were the first to be available in Chinese. With the backing of Chinese fans, Yao was voted an All-Star starter, netting about 250,000 more votes than Shaquille O’Neal. Shaq was on a three-year run of being the MVP of the NBA Finals at the time.

Yao played 17 minutes in his first All-Star Game, and scored two points. He didn’t light the world on fire, but he was there, and the Chinese NBA fans were part of the All-Star Game equation from 2003 on. Yao started the All-Star Game eight times from 2002 until his retirement in 2011. The in-roads the NBA has made in China, with Chinese fans, and with Asian Americans because of Yao Ming cannot be overstated.

The most recent rookie to be selected to the All-Star Game has had the same type of impact as Yao Ming. But where Yao represented international expansion, Blake Griffin is the poster-child of the new NBA. Griffin is big, strong, fast, and marketable. He’s smart, good looking, non-threatening, and self aware enough to laugh at himself.

Griffin’s appeared in mainstream car advertisements, in weird end-of-the dial ads for super niche products like Game Fly, and on viral videos and podcasts for companies like Earwolf and Funny or Die that are right at the bulls-eye of the zeitgeist.

Blake Griffin’s dunks have made him one of the most marketable players in the NBA. Credit: Steve Mitchell-USA TODAY Sports

It can be argued the Blake Griffin’s branding extravaganza began in the moment of super-synergy when he won the Slam Dunk Contest by leaping over the hood of a Kia, but in my mind it was the inclusion in the actual All-Star Game (held in LA the town where Blake happens to play his home games) that gave Griffin the legitimacy to be a massively marketable player and not just a one-trick pony.

Which brings us to Damian Lillard. Where does he fit in the conversation of game-changing rookies, and does he bring the kind of stuff to the table that put those aforementioned guys (not to mention the likes of Grant Hill, Shaq, Dikembe Mutombo, David Robinson, and Michael Jordan) into the All-Star Game?

So far in 2012-13, Lillard leads rookies in total minutes played, minutes per game, total assists, assists per game, and points per game. He’s also fourth in the league in minutes played, tied for 18^th in field goals, 12^th in field goal attempts, tied for ninth in three-point field goals, tied for fourth in three-pointers attempted, 10^th in total assists, 15^th in points, fifth in minutes per game, 18^th in points per game, and 14^th in assists per game. Those are All-Star type numbers. In fact, there are a couple statistical categories (minutes per game, minutes played, and field goal attempts) where all or almost all of the guys ahead of Damian are All-Stars, some of them starters.

Where Damian is lacking, though, and what may or may not have kept him out of the All-Star Game, is branding. Dame’s narrative is strong, he comes from a small college, wasn’t recruited much out of high school, and grew up in Oakland, but he lacks the kind of image that makes Blake Griffin Blake Griffin or the international cachet of a Yao Ming.

Portland understands what they have, and are taking advantage of it. But only those in the local market get to experience the cross-platform marketing at play when in-stadium PA announcer Mark Mason introduces Damian Lillard as wearing the letter “O” and not the number zero. (Here’s a hint, it’s tied directly to a local-area commercial for games on Comcast in which Damian explains he decided on zero to represent the fact that he came from Oakland, went to college in Ogden, and currently resides/plays his basketball in Oregon.)

There’s a marketable commodity in Damian Lillard, but the NBA hasn’t gotten wise to it yet.

But what does Lillard think about all this? The hoopla, the branding strategy, the future of the Portland Trail Blazers? He is complicit in everything after all; nobody can be drafted into a marketing scheme against his will.

“It’s a compliment to me but I got to pay my dues just like everybody else,” Lillard told me after a recent game when I asked him how he felt about getting brought up as a potential All-Star. “I got to keep getting better. I think down the line that stuff will come for me, but right now I got to keep helping the team win.”

When I brought up to Damian the sometimes-salient facts that Portland plays half of its games in the Pacific Northwest, hardly ever gets on national TV, and isn’t one of the top franchises in the NBA, and because of those things some of the more marketable elements of his game are lost on the less discerning professional basketball fans, this is how he responded:

“We’re an NBA team. We might not be the Lakers are the Knicks, but we’re an NBA team,” Lillard said. “We have an All-Star on our team, so it’s not like people don’t know what we’re doing or don’t know how I play or what I’m doing on the floor.”

I re-framed my line of questioning a little bit after it had been announced the Lillard would be competing in the Skills Challenge, an event that would put him center-stage all by himself and up against some of the NBA’s top talent at the point guard position. But he didn’t imagine that this event and his inclusion in it would do much to raise his profile.

“I don’t think it will do a lot, I just think it will allow people to see me participating in some type of competition,” he explained. “It’s a precise type of challenge so they’ll get to see my ability to do things like that.”

He does admit, though, that the more he plays and the more heads he turns, the more basketball fans across the country are coming to know him.

“I think a lot more people are starting to me familiar with my story, where I come from. I think people can appreciate it because there are a lot of people that have been in my position that didn’t get the opportunity to play in this league,” Lillard told me. “There are a lot of people that are in my position right now as far as coming from a small school and growing in a tough neighborhood. I think it’s being recognized because it gives people hope.”

There’s certainly an opportunity here to be capitalized on, it’s just not immediately obvious what the best course of action is going to be. Maybe the NBA will build Damian Lillard’s branding around Dame being an ambassador for small college players. Maybe it will be built around his preternatural leadership skills and knack for operating calmly under extreme pressure. Or maybe it will be constructed around Lillard’s very apparent ability to never be flapped. (That’s my attempt at a play on the word unflappable, probably the most apt descriptor I can come up with for Damian Lillard.)

However they choose to do it, there’s plenty of branding for the NBA to be built around Damian Lillard. Maybe not enough to make him the first backcourt rookie to make the All-Star Game since Michael Jordan, but the list of guys not selected to the All-Star Game in their rookie year includes both Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving, two of the most marketable young players in the NBA and two guys with highly successful marketing campaigns that tie the league to international brands like Nike and Pepsi.

All-Star Game or no, there’s a chance a similar kind of marketing campaign and branding strategy will be in Damian Lillard’s future.

@mikeacker | @ripcityproject | mike.acker1@gmail.com

The All-Star Game is the place where the NBA does the best it can to sell itself to the masses. Credit: Brett Davis-USA TODAY Sports

January 27, 2013; Los Angeles, CA, USA; Portland Trail Blazers point guard Damian Lillard (0) goes in for a basket against the defense of Los Angeles Clippers shooting guard Jamal Crawford (11) during the first half at Staples Center. Mandatory Credit: Gary A. Vasquez-USA TODAY Sports

There still really isn’t a formula for how Portland gets wins, unless you count banking on a furious comeback and clutch miracle threes as a game plan. There is, however, a pretty solid set of variables that tend to play an important role in every Blazer loss. If Portland doesn’t shoot well and they don’t play defense, they don’t win, basically ever.

The Blazers can make up for not being able to hit shots by controlling the flow of a game, making it difficult for their opponent to score, and limiting offensive rebounds. By the same token, they’re not always sunk by poor defense if they can manage to outscore their opponent. But, like I said, if the Blazers shoot poorly and struggle on defense, they don’t win, basically ever.

Portland’s inability to either shoot or defend in Sunday night’s lackluster loss to the Clippers in Los Angeles was never more evident than during a sequence that closed the game’s first half. The Blazers had the ball out of bounds with 19 seconds remaining in the second quarter trailing 53-50. The ball was in-bounded to Luke Babbitt, he pumped-faked at the three-point line, took a dribble to the hoop, and hoisted up a short-armed long two. The ball hit the front of the rim, Lamar Odom grabbed the rebound, and because not a single Portland player was paying attention, Blake Griffin was able to run out for an easy dunk.

It wasn’t a soul crusher, but Blake’s dunk certainly gave the home team the momentum going into the second half. After that, it was pretty much all LA. The Blazers scored 27 points in Sunday’s opening quarter; they managed 34 total in the second half. Bad shot selection (or more to the point, missed shots) played a big part in that.

Here are a couple shot charts to show what I’m talking about (from ESPN’s box score):

Damian Lillard 3rd Quarter

Damian Lillard 4th Quarter

Wesley Matthews 3rd Quarter

Wesley Matthews 4th Quarter

Nicolas Batum 3rd Quarter

Portland is a jump shooting team, when their three main jump shooters can’t hit shots…you know how that goes.

But don’t just at the missed shots, look at the shot totals. Nicolas Batum took a total of five field goal attempts Sunday. He took 15 shots on Saturday. For Nicolas to be effective, he needs to take at least 10 shots, AT LEAST 10 shots. His five shot attempts on Sunday tied for his lowest output of the season, and was only his fifth game in 43 with less than 10 shots. We can’t expect Nic to have a triple-double every night out, but if he wants to make the full-time transition to offensive power-house, he needs to show up more times than he doesn’t. That being said, Batum finished Sunday’s game with eight points, eight assists, and six rebounds.

So that basically covers Portland not shooting well. As for the Blazers not playing defense, the Clippers shot 52% from the field on Sunday night (42-of-82), and gave up at least six points to every Clipper who played not named Ryan Hollins. Hollins was the last man off the LA bench after Portland head coach Terry Stotts waived the white flag. He played two and half minutes and missed his only field goal attempt.

The biggest indication of the Blazers’ defensive struggles were the numbers put up by Blake Griffin (9-of-15 with most of his buckets coming from inside), and the numbers for all of LA’s mid-range shooters (Grant Hill, Matt Barnes, Caron Butler, Jamal Crawford, and Willie Green all had at least three made field goals). Combine those numbers with the shooting of DeAndre Jordan (4-of-6 from the field for eight points in 16 and a half minutes) and Ronny Turiaf (3-of-4 for six points in nine and a half minutes), and you get the picture. Portland couldn’t stop anybody.

Sunday was a rough night for the Blazers, that’s for sure. But the reality of the situation is they’re lucky to have split a two-game series with the Clippers. LA’s depth is much more than Portland can handle. Their inside game is one of the best in the league. And their pace and style of play isn’t an exact counter to what the Blazers are trying to do, but it but doesn’t exactly play into Portland’s hands.

We should be happy that the Blazers managed a win on Saturday against one of the top teams in the conference without having to put up their best 48 minutes of basketball.

Portland has an important stretch of basketball coming up. There next six games are against Dallas, Utah, Houston, and Minnesota, four of the teams that will finish in the seven through 11 spots in the Western Conference. Only two of those six games are at home. A 3-3 split of those games would be ideal (especially if they can take one each off of Houston and Utah, two of the teams ahead of Portland in the standings on the right side of the top eight).

Winning some games in February is much more important for the long-term outcome of this season than taking two straight off the Clippers.

The Blazers close the month of January at home against the Mavericks on Tuesday. If they win, they’ll finish 8-8.

One quick thing:

• I caught a bit of Twitter heat for a gloating a little bit about correctly predicting the outcome of Sunday’s game (OK so I was off by two). Let me assure you that I am a huge Blazer fan. I want them to win every time they step out on the court. That doesn’t mean I actually think they will. Also, I like being right, in the rare occasion that it happens. So I’m sorry for saying the Clippers would beat Portland by 15.

Box Score

Standings

@mikeacker | @ripcityproject | mike.acker1@gmail.com

January 27, 2013; Los Angeles, CA, USA; Los Angeles Clippers power forward Blake Griffin (32) is fouled on a scoring drive by Portland Trail Blazers small forward Luke Babbitt (8) during the second half at Staples Center. Mandatory Credit: Gary A. Vasquez-USA TODAY Sports

Chris Paul has missed a couple games due to a bruised knee. He’s likely to miss both of the home-and-home back-to-back with Portland that starts Saturday at the Rose Garden. Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports

When I put together my preview for the month of January, I gave the Blazers eight wins, predicting Portland would finish .500 for the first month of 2013. After two weeks, and seven games, the Blazers were 5-2, having beaten a veritable who’s who of the NBA that included the Knicks, the Grizzlies, and the Heat. We all know what happened after that.

With three games left in January, Portland has six wins, having won only a single time in their last seven outings. There’s still time for the Blazers to reach eight wins and prove that even if I couldn’t call all the wins as they happened I got their win total correct, but to get there, they’ll have to get at least one win in their next two over the team with the best record in the Pacific Division and the current Kings of Los Angeles.

It’s pretty trite and tired to talk about the Clippers of 2013 as not being your grandfather’s Clippers. Narrative is important in the NBA, we all know that, but there comes a time when an old narrative needs to be retired so a new one can be built. And I’m not talking about the “Clippers are the best team in LA” narrative. I’m talking about the “Clippers are good now and mid-level teams shouldn’t expect to roll over them anymore” narrative.

The Lakers are terrible right now, but they’re still the Lakers. They’ll be good again, and very soon. The Clippers might be the best team in LA right now, but it seems unlikely the balance of power in the City of Angles has shifted in anyway that can be identified as “long-term.”

However, as long as Blake Griffin is wearing a Clippers jersey, they “other LA team” isn’t going to be an easy win for anybody. I think the proper way to talk about the LA Clippers in 2012-13 is to introduce the “top team in the West but is it sustainable?” narrative. I’m not ready to pronounce the Clippers the best in the West for the rest of the decade, but they’re firmly in the discussion for favorites to get beaten by the Oklahoma City Thunder in the Western Conference Finals.

To get one of two over the the next two days, the Blazers have their work cut out for them.

Blazers Starting 5: PG Damian Lillard, SG Wesley Matthews, SF Nicolas Batum, PF LaMarcus Aldrige, C J.J. Hickson

Clippers Starting 5: PG Eric Bledsoe, SG Willie Green, SF Caron Butler, PF Blake Griffin, C DeAndre Jordan

Take a look at the box score from the last time Portland played the Los Angeles Clippers. One thing should jump out at you immediately. That evening, a 103-90 win for the Clips at the Rose Garden, DeAndre Jordan went 8-of-10 from the field and 5-of-7 from the line for 21 points.

Take a look at DAJ’s shot chart (from ESPN’s box score):

Literally not a single shot outside the lane. The Blazers can’t defend inside, but they can find a way to protect the rim. Jordan isn’t going to shoot from outside the paint, that’s not his game, but Portland has to do all they can to deny DeAndre what basically amount to free baskets.

The Blazers have caught a bit of a break by very likely getting the Clippers without Chris Paul. LA lost one night ago to the Phoenix Suns (the team with the second-worst record in the Western Conference) playing without CP3 for the fifth time in seven games. The Clips are 3-2 without their floor leader, who according to Yahoo is expected to miss both games against the Blazers.

Paul’s back-up, Eric Bledsoe, is serviceable and highly touted by certain parts of the blog-o-sphere, but he his not Chris Paul. Bledsoe will give Damian Lillard fits with his aggressive defense, but most of that will be mitigated by the fact that he won’t also be killing Dame on the offensive end.

I’ll give Portland the point guard match-up and LA the center match-up. The other three positions are almost pushes across the board. I personally like LaMarcus Aldridge over Blake Griffin, but to deny Blake’s skill and impact on a game is to do so at your own risk. Tough Juice (sometimes also called Caron Butler) is a tough cover for Nicolas Batum, just as Batum will be a tough cover for Butler. Willie Green and Wesley Matthews are cut from the same cloth. If Wes gets hot, Portland has a chance; if Willie Green gets hot, they probably don’t.

What to Watch For

• Battle of the benches. Portland got some serious contributions from their bench in the Blazers’ win over the Indiana Pacers Wednesday night, but very little of it showed up in the box score. Well, that’s not true. It showed up in the box score but not in the places you’d expect. Portland got enough solid minutes from its reserve unit that not a single Blazer starter reached 40 minutes. Regardless of what Terry Stotts says, keeping his starters minutes to under 40 is not a bad thing. That being said, just showing up and providing the starters with rest isn’t going to be enough on Saturday against the Clippers. LA has turned the corner from one-hit wonder to very serious contender by shoring up their bench. Jamal Crawford, Matt Barnes, and Lamar Odom are all Six Man of the Year types. Grant Hill might be old, but he’s still Grant Hill. Portland’s bench is going to have to get some scoring done. Will Barton maybe?
• LaMarcus Aldridge and his All-Star bid. LA said he didn’t think he was going to make the All-Star team after Wednesday’s game. He was wrong. Let’s see if that has an impact on how he plays. LA’s game doesn’t mold itself well to what Blake Griffin does on defense, and because my bet is DAJ get’s the ball a lot while being played man-up by J.J. Hickson, LaMarcus is going to have to guard Blake one-on-one a lot. If LA can make Blake work on the defensive end and slow him down some on the offensive end, Portland might steal a win.
• Can the Blazers avoid getting behind. The Blazers got down big early the last time these two teams played. Portland fought their way back that night, only to lose. The Blazers can’t afford to get down early on Saturday. The Clips are in need of a win, and if they smell blood in the water it could be a long night for Portland. The Blazers’ start against the Pacers was a good sign. They’ll give themselves a chance on this first of a home-and-home if they can build on they way they played on Wednesday.

@mikeacker | @ripcityproject | mike.acker1@gmail.com