Portland Trail Blazers: Damian Lillard’s All-Star Candidacy

Damian Lillard might get into the 2016 All-Star game. He might not. Does that change how he’s played this year for the Portland Trail Blazers? Absolutely not.

All-Star selections are probably not the best way to determine who the best players in each conference are from year to year, if that’s even what the All-Star game really is (*cough* Kobe Bryant *cough*). It’s about entertainment, which is fine, but these All-Star appearances are often shown in all-time player rankings and hall-of-fame resumes (Joe Johnson has seven All-Star appearances while Mike Conley and Serge Ibaka have zero).

The actual selections can feel meaningless and the outcries over which good players did and didn’t get selected often feel asinine. These discussions, despite their sometimes frustrating debates over the value of rings, wins and individual accomplishment, can still bring about recognition for less-heralded or forgotten players who are in the midst of impressive seasons.

Damian Lillard had the fifth highest number of votes amongst Western Conference guards last year and currently has the 10th highest number of votes this year. Most people could probably guess that this doesn’t have very much to do with how Damian Lillard is actually playing this year.

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Fans want to vote for players on a winning team, which makes sense on its own but often ignores the reality that all players are heavily influenced by their situation (including their teammates, coaches, and anything else in their current environment and context).

The Portland Trail Blazers are not as good as they were last year but there’s no reason to believe that Damian Lillard is any worse than he was last year. The fans probably aren’t going to vote him in as a starter and who knows how many of the coaches who have to fill out the reserve ballot care about who’s picked for the All-Star game.

Whether or not he gets selected is irrelevant to how his game and value as a basketball player should be viewed and understood. What’s important is that Damian Lillard is still really freaking good and super important to this Trail Blazers team.

Lillard is shooting three-pointers at a higher attempt rate (11.4 attempts per 100 possessions this year, 10.0 last year) and a converting a higher percentage (37.9 percent this year, 34.3 percent last year) than he was last year, which is obviously good for the Blazers. It’s really nice when your starting point guard can hit jumpers like these.

The value of his perimeter shooting isn’t just that the shots go in though. His shooting warps opposing defenses and can lead to layups and open jumpers as the defense tries to scramble back into position.

Lillard’s shooting opens up a ton of things for his teammates in a way that only elite three-point shooters can do. There are quite a few guys who can shoot three-pointers really well (not many can do it quite as well as him but that’s part of why he’s so good), but what makes Damian Lillard so special is his ability to make smart passes at the right time, particularly out of the pick and roll.

That last clip is one of my favorites. The offense is stagnating and Lillard sizes up Stephen Curry and starts to try to break him down as a ton of guards in the league do towards the end of the shot clock.

Lillard is a really smart passer though. He’s able to be cognizant of how far Iguodala is shading towards his side while also dancing on Curry (something that anybody who has tried to survey the floor while pulling off dribble moves knows is super hard to do) and hits Crabbe with a pass just as Iguodala is taking another half-step towards Curry’s side of the floor, allowing Crabbe to blow by a recovering Iguodala (Iguodala’s a really good defender!) for an easy layup.

That’s a really subtle skill as a passer but a lot of times it’s the difference between an open shot and a tougher contested shot.

He’s really good at basketball and is having a tremendous season. He might get in to the All-Star Game; he might not. Curry and Russell Westbrook are most likely going to get voted into the game and last year there were only four guards voted in as reserves.

Chris Paul, Klay Thompson, James Harden, Mike Conley, Brandon Knight, C.J. McCollum and Andrew Wiggins will be in contention for those four spots on the reserves along with Lillard. There are plenty of arguments for all of these guys and they would all be perfectly good participants in the All-Star game.

Whether or not Lillard gets in to the All-Star game won’t change how he’s played so far. He was good surrounded by really talented players like LaMarcus Aldridge, Wesley Matthews and Nicolas Batum and he’s been really good while playing with the less talented players currently in Portland.

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The Blazers may not be winning as many games as they were last year but that has nothing to do with Lillard. He’s been just as good as he was last year and is just as deserving of getting into the All-Star game as he was last year.