Portland Trail Blazers: Damian Lillard Needs To Play Some Defense
We all know what Damian Lillard can do by now. He won the Rookie of the Year award in 2012-13, averaging an outstanding 19 points and 6.5 assists per game. He led the Trail Blazers to the playoffs last year and knocked off the higher-seeded Houston Rockets in the first round, before running into the San Antonio Spurs buzz saw.
Damian Lillard was an absolute offensive wizard for the Blazers last season. It’s tough to improve on 19 points and 6.5 assists, but Lillard certainly did just that. Although he averaged fewer assists with 5.6, he did score at a higher clip, averaging 20.7 points per game while playing 35.8 minutes per game, down from playing 38.6 minutes per game in his rookie year.
Lillard also hit the 3-point shot at a much higher clip, shooting an elite 39.4 percent from downtown.
It’s safe to say that Damian Lillard was the engine of the Trail Blazers offense. The team went as he did, as they performed better when he was performing better. His offensive prowess was not the problem last season.
Damian Lillard suffers from a common problem among NBA perimeter players: laziness. The practice of taking defensive plays off to conserve energy and produce better numbers on offense has been around for a very long time. Just about every coach in the league will place his top offensive player on the opposing teams weakest offensive player to help him play more minutes and to keep the offense running better.
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The problem is that a lot of players have been taking that practice too far and have been taking entire games off, which is not what coaches want out of their star players. Damian Lillard is one of those players. Lillard is similar to James Harden in that he is all offense and no defense. Here were his advanced stats from last season:
| Season | MP | PER | TS% | AST% | STL% | BLK% | TOV% | USG% | ORtg | DRtg | OWS | DWS | WS | WS/48 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013-14 ★ | 2937 | 18.6 | .568 | 25.1 | 1.1 | 0.5 | 11.5 | 25.0 | 116 | 110 | 7.8 | 1.8 | 9.6 | .157 |
Provided by Basketball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 9/19/2014.
Damian Lillard played heavy minutes last year, and as you can see, his offensive numbers were superb. However, his defensive numbers are a whole new level of terrible. His Defensive Rating (DRtg) of 110 is absolutely atrocious, as his is laughably bad Steal Percentage (STL%) of 1.1.
All of this led to Damian Lillard putting up an absolutely terrible 1.8 Defensive Win Shares (DWS). Damian Lillard often times finds himself lost on the defensive end and is frequently late on rotations. Lillard has a lot of trouble staying in front of guards who can handle the ball, and if teams really wanted to exploit him, they could run pick and rolls between the two guards and force Damian Lillard to cover their best ball handler.
That would pose a major problem for the Blazers because, let’s face it, Damian Lillard is one of the worst defensive players at his position.
There are a lot of bad defensive players in the league, but very few get as many minutes as he does. The result is that the Trail Blazers are left with a one way player as their leader and their best perimeter player. That poses a major problem because, as we all know, defense is what wins championships in the NBA. And there’s no way the Trail Blazers have a realistic chance at the title if they don’t find a way to mask Lillard even more defensively.