Trail Blazers: Why Damian Lillard is the most clutch player in Basketball

Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Robert Horry, LeBron James. There have been many clutch shot makers over the years in the NBA. Fast forward to the present though, and the guy you think of when you say clutch, is Damian Lillard of the Portland Trail Blazers.

Here’s why Dame, is the most clutch player in all of Basketball.

Before the 2019/20 season, Dame had two of the biggest shots in NBA Playoff history.

Against the Houston Rockets, up three games to two, way back in 2013/14, Dame made a shot that will go down in as one of the greatest in Blazer history. In just his second season and first NBA playoffs, Dame sent the Rockets packing.

Down by two, with just one second on the clock, Dame raced from one side of the court to the other, catching and shooting in one motion and sending the ball through the net as the buzzer expired to win the series. Though he was already an All-Star then, this was the first huge shot of Dame’s storied career and set the table for what was to come in future years.

In the 2018/19 playoffs, history repeated itself, except this time, the shot was bigger and had implications that went far beyond just the Blazers franchise.

The Blazers encountered the Oklahoma City Thunder in the first round of that year’s playoffs, with a monster matchup between Dame and Russell Westbrook. Westbrook had famously thrown shade Dame’s way with the below exchange earlier in the year.

Dame completely dominated this matchup in the series, and up three games to one, on the Blazers home floor, Dame had the performance of his life. A see-saw affair saw the game go all the way to the final possession, with the ball in Dame’s hands with the clock winding down and the scores tied at 115 each.

He already had 47 points at this point of the game, with nine three-pointers. Dame walked the ball up and got to the right side of the floor, before pulling up and burying a three to ice the game and series, giving him 50 points and one of the greatest walk-off shots in NBA history.

This shot seemed to elevate Dame’s game to a whole new level, as the next two seasons he recorded career highs in many categories, none more so than his clutch shot-making, especially from distance.

In the last two seasons, 35 players have attempted 100 or more shots in the clutch between the regular season and playoffs. Dame has the second most makes of any of these players, at 88.

He has the most made threes in the entire bunch, at 37, and he is third in efficiency for this group, at a staggering 55.8 effective field goal percentage. Interestingly, the only players who were ahead of him in efficiency were Giannis Antetokounmpo and Terry Rozier, who took 80 and 69 fewer shots than Dame did.

The NBA defines the clutch period in a game as the last five minutes of the fourth quarter or overtime in a game where the margin is under 5 points.

If you take the time down to one minute left on the clock, and then thirty seconds on the clock, Dame continues to rise in the rankings.

With 30 seconds on the clock in the fourth or OT and the margin at five points either way, Dame is first in made shots, first in made threes, and first in efficiency.

Whether it was his six points in eight seconds including a buzzer-beater against the Chicago Bulls in the 2021 season, or the 28 points he had in the 4th and two overtimes against the Denver Nuggets in the 2021 playoffs, Dame makes big shots at a higher rate than any other player.

He is mister clutch in the NBA at the moment, and because he is still in his prime, we are bound to see a whole lot more of his crazy shot-making.