No. 3: Who defends Portland Trail Blazers star Damian Lillard?
Derek Fisher and Ron Harper aren’t walking through that door, and unfortunately for the Lakers, neither are their two best guard defenders in Rajon Rondo and Avery Bradley. The Lakers are bringing knives to the gun fight in this battle. And though the Lakers have matchups they can actively hunt offensively, does that hunt produce more points than Lillard’s do?
In the regular season, Lillard’s numbers against the Los Angeles Lakers were as follows: 36.0 points, 6.0 rebounds and 9.0 assists on 50.8 percent shooting, 39.4 percent from 3-point range, and 87.9 percent from the free throw line.
If the Lakers were entering this game with a wider selection of defenders, one could certainly make a case. But without it, the Blazers are left with players like Alex Caruso, Danny Green, or perhaps even LeBron James for some stretches.
In the regular season, Lillard scored 16 points and went 5-of-12 from the field when defended by Caruso. He has the aggressiveness and defensive intelligence to make life difficult for Lillard. But doing that and stopping him are two entirely different things.
BBallIndex’s Cranjis McBasketball’s coverage of the Lakers-Blazers gives us an idea of what the Lakers are going to be planning to do to defend Lillard. A few things that caught the eye:
— Funneling Lillard towards Davis with his off-hand.
— Hard hedges
— Straight blitzes on ball screens
And it’s a chance we could see the Lakers try a similar game plan to Brooklyn, where they meet him at half-court and force the ball out of his hands. That’s going to be contingent on how Portland’s role players shoot. The reason it worked so well in past Blazers series is because of the fact that Portland’s perimeter shooters couldn’t make enough shots to neutralize it.
The Lakers didn’t become one of the NBA’s best defenses by accident. Scoring against the Lakers won’t be an enviable task. But Lillard should be able to have some level of carryover from the regular season, and given that he’s proven he can overcome some of the schemes that formerly worked against him, expect one of the better series of his prolific career.