Trail Blazers: How has Damian Lillard raised his offensive game?

Damian Lillard has elevated his game in a year where the Trail Blazers have been shorthanded every night. How has he managed to raise his game offensively?

Isolation and high pick and roll have often been a go-to for Damian Lillard. Not always blessed with the calibre of teammates that contemporaries Stephen Curry and James Harden have, Lillard has had to put the Trail Blazers on his back many times in his eight seasons in town.

This year, without the physical presences on the wing or at the big men positions, offensive rebounding and posting up is gone. Attacking the basket from the wing is a struggle too. And with big man Jusuf Nurkic missing for almost 12 months, passing out of the post hasn’t been an option either.

The Blazers were never a massive ball movement team anyway. But now when you add the above issues in, it’s meant Dame has had to create almost all of his own offense. But you know what? It’s working.

Dame creating his own shot more than ever before has morphed him into a Steph Curry / James Harden like combination of efficiency / skill and volume scoring. Maybe we don’t get this version of Dame if we didn’t have the bad injury luck?

It doesn’t matter now, as Dame has gone on a run reminiscent of some of the greatest scorers of all-time.

Lillard’s go-to plays have been using ball screens from bigs at the top of the key or utilizing dribble hand-offs and hitting threes from both actions. Lillard is one of the best pick and roll ball-handlers in the game.

Though he doesn’t have a prime roll threat with Hassan Whiteside as the partner, his scoring out of the pick and roll is some of the best in the league. With over 75 percent of his shot attempts being unassisted by teammates, Dame has taken his already heavy iso-style from previous years and just upped the volume.

He has halved his long mid-range attempts for more threes, and now attempts 47 percent of his shots from three-point range. Dame’s uber-efficient shot profile boasts an impressive 81 percent of his shots at the rim or from three. His early in the shot clock plays also supercharge the Blazers offense.

If he is open he will pull up from anywhere, including beyond thirty feet. His efficiency on super-deep shots is something to behold.

https://twitter.com/ripcityproject/status/1223704606087114752

This version of Dame is a legitimate MVP contender. His efficiency is at an all-time high, he is averaging almost thirty points a game, and in a small market he has everyone talking about him nationally.

Dame’s style of play is also aesthetically pleasing, it isn’t true isolation a lot of the time like James Harden. His use of screens and the pick and roll make him ten times more watchable than conference counterpart Harden.

You don’t often see a player raising his game like this at 29, but Dame has been able to as he’s such a relentless hard worker. The deep threes have been an addition to his game where he is able to take more and more each season.

His confidence in his game and abilities has been a large part of his elevated play this year. When watching Blazers games he is so calm and collected, with full confidence in his ability to win games and most of the time be the best player on the floor.

Dame won’t average 50 points a game for the rest of the season, but he has shown a level of play that puts him and this team in the box seat for a massive second half to the year. There is no reason this team can’t win 45 plus games and make the seven seed.

Let’s celebrate Dame’s amazing play regardless of the team record though. This is one of the greatest runs in team history!