Trail Blazers: Damian Lillard has raised his game, again

At age 29 it seemed impossible that Damian Lillard would raise his game again this year. When you add in the Trail Blazers injuries, how is he doing it?

This year has been a tough one for the Trail Blazers team itself and for the fans. With the starting three, four and five injured for basically the whole season, Damian Lillard has put the team on his back again and willed them to 20 wins.

Though a 20 and 27 record isn’t anything to write home about, they are only two wins back from the surging eighth-seed Memphis Grizzlies. Lillard’s late January will forever be forgotten in the sadness of Kobe Bryant‘s tragic passing, but he has had an amazing season none-the-less.

Through 45 games, Lillard has career highs up and down the stat sheet. The most amazing part of this is though, he is doing it with less usage than the 2019 season and he is creating more of his own shots.

The above tweet tells you everything you need to know. Dame is doing more with less, while only having CJ McCollum and then the addition of Carmelo Anthony providing substantial help. The Blazers bench has been weak all season so they have relied on Dame even more for heavy minutes.

Dame currently has a 61.9 percent true shooting percentage. Only Devin Booker and Karl-Anthony Towns have been more efficient among players with 20 points a game this season, both players have fewer games played and fewer points per game. What Dame is doing isn’t really being recognized on a national or all-time scale, but it should be.

That Dame is being so efficient while creating almost all of his own shots and averaging 28 points a game, is remarkable.

Only the true greats can raise their game year after year. This year Lillard has taken more 3-pointers. For mere mortals, if you raise your three-point volume, what will happen most of the time is that you will lose some efficiency.

Not Dame, he is attempting ten threes a game and is hitting on 38.2 percent of them. The second-best mark of his career.

With Jusuf Nurkic out and there being fewer ball handlers on this Blazers team, Dame took it upon himself to create more for others and is now averaging a career-high in assists at 7.7 per game.

Dame hasn’t complained one bit about the injuries or lack of support this year, he has just got on with his work. He was one of the first to tell beat reporters that the front office shouldn’t compromise the long-term future of the team for short-term gain.

If not for the Blazers’ weak record this season, we would be talking about Dame being right in the MVP conversation. It’s still not too late to see a run at the playoffs as well. It may take a big run to the playoffs for Dame to get some real recognition nationally. But with CJ back from injury, the addition of Trevor Ariza and then more possible reinforcements at the trade deadline, it might just happen.

Maybe this team makes a massive run for the playoffs, maybe they fall short. Either way, we are witnessing true greatness in Dame this season. To average 50 points per game over an entire week is mind-numbing.

After the tragic passing of Kobe, it’s important that we recognize true greatness while it’s still around.