Pressure Is on Damian Lillard to Step Up and Save Portland Trail Blazers
Damian Lillard is it for the Portland Trail Blazers.
For reasons that extend beyond postseason livelihood, the point guard finds himself facing a coming-of-reputation trial against the Memphis Grizzlies—a team few expect Portland to beat—that demands Lillard rise to the occasion and save the day, lest his inceptive stardom suffer a thundering blow.
This has never been more clear than it was following the Blazers' Game 1 letdown on Sunday. The Grizzlies came out firing, using a 58-point first half to set the stage for a 100-86 victory that didn't accurately reflect their wire-to-wire dominance.
Battered and bruised themselves, the Grizzlies opened up a 10-point lead in the first quarter, which they extended to as many as 29 points. Memphis never once trailed in the contest. The Grizz dared LaMarcus Aldridge and Lillard to shoot jumpers, disallowing dribble penetration and transition opportunities and thoroughly disrupting Portland's offense.
The Blazers and Lillard are now in a difficult spot that's more challenging than even the most brutal projections could have predicted. Arron Afflalo didn't play Sunday with a shoulder strain, Wesley Matthews (torn Achilles) isn't walking through that door, and they did nothing to suggest the Game 1 fiasco is but a small-scale hiccup.
Capturing any sort of momentum in Game 2 and beyond starts with Lillard, last year's postseason-hero-turned-liability for at least one night. He shot 5-of-21 from the floor in Game 1, including an 0-of-6 effort from deep and a 1-of-11 showing outside the restricted area:
"The good looks that I did get, they didn't fall, and it didn't get any easier," he said afterward, per Baxter Holmes of ESPN.com. "I've just got to keep taking shots, keep shooting the ball with confidence and know that at some point, it's going to come back around."
Indeed, there's little about his offensive struggles that is irreversible.
Though the Grizzlies are a suffocating defensive outfit, Lillard seldom misses all of his three-pointers or shoots a pitiful 40 percent around the basket. Nine of his 21 shot attempts were uncontested, of which he hit just one.
Twelve of his 16 misses also came in the latter three periods, when the Blazers were trying to erase a large deficit by taking the first available look, hoping as they always do that additional possessions result in successful comebacks.
Open shots are bound to fall, and Portland's offense won't always spend at least three quarters of the game in panic mode. There's more than enough evidence to suggest Lillard will rebound on the more glamorous end of the floor and approach the 22.9 points, 6.5 assists and 38.6 percent shooting from long range he averaged through 11 postseason outings last year.
But the key to Lillard rescuing himself and the Blazers from injuries, this series deficit and the general disappointment they've experienced since February isn't solely a matter of steadying the offense's flow and making shots.
For Lillard specifically, it's an issue of defense.
Three seasons, two All-Star appearances and innumerable displays of crunch-time heroics into his NBA career, Lillard's star has hit a wall. He is an exceptionally talented player prone to posting exceptionally impressive stat lines at an exceptionally competitive point guard position. But he's quickly becoming a one-way name.
Defense has long been the biggest knock against him. It flew under the radar during his rookie campaign. He was new to the league, and the Blazers weren't even a playoff contender.
No one was about to knock him last season, either. Lillard nabbed his first All-Star selection, Portland was a surprise, and he carried the team to an unexpected first-round win over the Houston Rockets.
But there has been no hiding this time around, as Grantland's Zach Lowe pointed out well ahead of the playoffs:
As a reflection of Lillard's work, the Blazers ranked in the bottom 10 of point guard prevention during the regular season, according to HoopsStats.com. And that snapshot of Lillard's defense didn't change in Game 1.
Mike Conley, playing on a sore left ankle, and Beno Udrih torched the Blazers, combining for 36 points and eight assists on 15-of-25 shooting. To be sure, Lillard wasn't alone in allowing Memphis' point men free reign.
Then again, that's part of the problem.
Portland preferred to stick Nicolas Batum and even Steve Blake on Conley and Udrih when possible, electing to stash Lillard on lesser off-ball threats like Jeff Green and Tony Allen. This sometimes left Lillard guarding inside the arc, tasking him with picking up blown coverage and dribble penetration.
Such possessions did not end well:
When Lillard was on the ball, he struggled to read and react to screens, a season-long problem that's being accentuated in the wake of Portland's injuries. As Rip City Project's David MacKay wrote:
"This breakdown is especially glaring right now without their primary hustle defenders. Wesley Matthews (Achilles) is the best individual defender on the team- hands down- and Arron Afflalo (Shoulder) is the best at fighting through screens in Terry Stotts’ pick and roll defense. Neither is available at this time, which means that Portland’s first line of defense is Damian Lillard and C.J. McCollum.
The already sieve-like duo of Lillard and McCollum is weakened further by the energy they must expend as scorers in a rushed offense. It is not sustainable for them to force shots on one end then sprint back on defense; specifically since the Trail Blazers don’t hedge the P&R, leaving Lillard and McCollum out of gas to go over screens. This enervating cycle creates lapses that make everyone else have to work harder too.
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Pick-and-rolls aren't even the lone issue. The Blazers don't hedge on screens of any kind.
Relative to the rest of the league, the Grizzlies didn't deploy many pick-and-rolls during the regular season, nor did they run them like crazy in Game 1. They exploited Lillard with a mixed bag of plays, using hand-offs and off-ball screens to create separation
Here is Lillard losing Conley after the Blazers guard failed to get around or go under Zach Randolph quickly enough:
And here he is being picked off by Marc Gasol:
Getting into the lane and scoring became much too easy for a Grizzlies faction that ranked 13th in offensive rating this season. Lillard struggled to recover off screens and hurt Portland in the process.
Depending on his offense to make up for these defensive gaffes will only get him and, most importantly, the Blazers so far. Lillard didn't have the offensive juice to compensate for his defensive mistakes in Game 1, and against a stingy Memphis unit, it's entirely possible—if not inevitable—the same thing happens again. And again.
And again.
Offense is not a given for Lillard in this series. His performance on that end, however impressive, won't be enough to offset his recurring defensive warts.
To help the Blazers advance—or even make this a series—Lillard must do more. And to back up his once-sterling reputation, he'll need to do even more still.
Looking at the big picture, his past accolades mean little. Right now, he projects as one of those good-but-not-great point guards who has been blessed with top-flight teammates and whose status constantly comes under siege because of an inability to improve defensively.
"Nobody is giving us a shot," Lillard said, per Holmes. "Nobody is saying, 'Portland is going to come in here and win the series.' If anything, they're doubting us. That gives us even more freedom to come in here and play hard and play free."
The Blazers do, in fact, have the freedom of playing outside the confines of soaring standards. After starting the season 30-10, they played .500 basketball, closing out the NBA calendar at 21-21 and removing themselves from the championship conversation in a haze of injuries and mislaid expectations.
Lillard's career trajectory is afforded no such bittersweet luxury. His entire outlook isn't on the line against Memphis, but he can only elude the one-trick labels for so long. And after outrunning them for three years, they're starting to gain serious ground.
Win or lose, advance or fall, the pressure is on Lillard to play better, to defend better and to show that, in a series like this, he can still be a savior for Portland.
Unless otherwise cited, all stats courtesy of Basketball-Reference and NBA.com.
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