Damian Lillard Should Have Received More MVP Votes

The Portland Trail Blazers surprised the NBA with their success this season, mainly due to star point guard Damian Lilard.

So what would happen to your team lost four of their five starters, leaving only a point guard and role players to play out the season. What would happen to your team?

The Oklahoma City Thunder lost only one of their main stars, Kevin Durant, and they missed the playoffs.

At the end of last season, the Portland Trail Blazers lost one of the NBA’s best scorers in LaMarcus Aldridge, a top-level three-and-D player in Nicolas Batum, a max contract level player in Wesley Matthews (according to Dallas) and a serviceable center in Robin Lopez.

This left only Damian Lillard as the remaining starter from last year, it did not look good for Portland at the start of this year. It seemed that the reigning Northwest Division champions were going to struggle to be better than Philadelphia. Well, that is how it seemed.

The first half of the season, Portland surprised all of us by going 17-24, which was better than was expected of this team. In the second half of the season, Portland went on two win streaks, one of five games and later a six-game streak including a win against the Golden State Warriors.

This meant that Portland went 27-14 for the second half, finishing with a record of 44-38 in the tough Western Conference. Instead of missing the playoffs by a long way, they finished fifth.

How did Portland pull off this amazing feat? Well, one reason was that C.J. McCollum took his scoring average from 6.25 points per game from his first two seasons to 22.1 points per game this season and in the process being named Most Improved Player. The other reason was Lillard.

The Portland floor general played out of his skin and showed in his fourth season that he is a true star of this league with his leadership and ability. Lillard may have only scored four points per game more than last season but it was when he scored them that counted.

During the six-game win streak, Lillard scored at 33.3 points per game (25.1 for the season), including a 51-point night against the Warriors.

When the Blazers needed someone, Lillard was the one who stood up. It is inconceivable that he was not as All-Star this year. Even if the fans did not vote for him, the coaches should have picked him. I also cannot believe that he did not finish higher than eighth in the MVP voting.

How is the MVP decided? By a panel of media representatives. Now I understand that this is a fair way to do it; most journalists can be objective.

However, Golden State took way too much media attention all year. I am not saying that they did not deserve it, a 73-9 record has never been done before, and yes, Stephen Curry was a deserving MVP winner.

However, can anyone argue that Lillard was not the MVP for his team? Can you say that he led his team to an unexpected playoff berth? Was he not more valuable than Draymond Green or even Kawhi Leonard who had so much more help?

I am not saying that Lillard deserved to win the award. Curry was certainly a deserving winner. However, Lillard deserved greater recognition for the season that he just finished.

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If Portland can recruit well this offseason we may even be talking about Portland in the Western Conference Finals next year and a massive part of that will be thanks to the attitude and play of Lillard.

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