Portland Trail Blazers: Damian Lillard is the greatest Blazer of all-time

Damian Lillard is the greatest Blazer of all-time. After an epic 2019/20 season, he now sits atop the Mount Rushmore of Portland Trail Blazers basketball.

Sorry Clyde Drexler, Damian Lillard has now overtaken you and stands waving atop the Mount Rushmore of Portland Trail Blazers basketball. The craziest part of this, Dame is still 29 and is in his prime. He’s far from finished.

At the start of the season, Dame was nipping at Drexler’s heels. He hadn’t had the postseason success that Drexler had with two finals appearances, but it was consistency of individual play that had him close behind.

This season though, Dame has shown an all new level of individual play. He has raised the bar with career highs in almost every category, while also going on his monumental run in January and February.

Clyde only had three seasons of scoring 25-plus points a game in his entire career. Dame has five already, in only eight years. His individual peak level of play puts him in élite company in this league.

The below streak is amazing. The only player on a current streak like this. He is a model of consistency.

Clyde is an all-time great and is a Hall of Famer for this reason. But he had a great supporting cast who helped him get to the NBA finals twice.

Lillard has only had an All-Star teammate three times in his eight years in Portland, and those were the first three years of his career here.

Clyde had teammates selected as All-Stars seven times in his ten seasons in Portland.

This isn’t to say that Dame won’t have team success in Portland. The three core pieces of one of their most successful teams ever will all be back on court when NBA basketball resumes.

CJ McCollum and Jusuf Nurkic were both huge parts of the team that won 53 games in the regular season in 2019, then made the Western Conference Finals. How do those West finals look if Jusuf Nurkic is defending the pick and roll instead of Enes Kanter?

The roster that Dame has supporting him currently is probably the best roster he’s had in all his years playing for this team. Unfortunately they haven’t been fit.

Dame’s 48-point-a-game average for a couple of weeks in the new year showed what he was capable of when the chips were down.

This is the new, in his prime Dame. The same Dame that waved goodbye to an entire franchise in the Oklahoma City Thunder.

Dame’s prime level of play is higher than prime Clyde. He is a better shooter and playmaker. Though he isn’t a superior defender, Dame has the one skill that you need in this day and age if you want to be a title contender, élite shooting.

You have to have an élite shooter if you want to win an NBA title. Dame is exactly that.

The other thing Dame has that Clyde doesn’t, is signature moments. The walk-off three against the Houston Rockets to win the series in 2014, and then the walk-off three with the wave to win the series against the Thunder. Both of these moments aren’t just huge in Trail Blazers history, they are some of the biggest shots in NBA history.

Clyde had a great career in a Trail Blazers uniform. But now Dame has passed him based on his insane individual play and a consistency that is unrivalled in this franchise and puts him in rare company around the league.

The most exciting thing to reflect on, Dame is only 29-years-old. We have a lot more years of him in his prime where he can show that is he not only the greatest Blazer, but one of the greatest NBA players of all-time.

Take a bow Dame, you just continue to amaze us