25. Damian Lillard
In 2017, it’s en vogue to say that where you play no longer has much effect on the level of national exposure you receive. We hear this line over and over again, the thinking being that because of the internet, social media, availability of highlights and info, etc., you can be a star anywhere, and that kids in New York can be wearing your sneakers even if you play halfway across the country.
Tell that to Damian Lillard.
He just got named to his third All-Star team, somehow for the first time in three years. No, he’ll never be a great individual defender, but the TrailbBlazers have the seventh-best defense in basketball and Lillard is on the floor three-quarters of the time.
He’s seventh in the league in scoring, and while he’s not the elite creator that some of his peers are, he combines top-notch shooting (over 40 percent from deep since December first), penetration, and ball skills better than anyone not named Curry or Harden.
And yet the vast majority of the NBA-watching public continues to sleep on him.
(Dame himself chimed in on this discussion via Twitter recently…let’s just say he doesn’t disagree that playing in Portland hasn’t exactly helped catapult him to greater levels of fame.)
In an economic climate where his salary can now be considered below market, the fact that he’s locked up for three more years makes a big difference, as does the fact that he’s only 27 years old.
Can he be the best player on a championship team? It’s the question we always default to, whether we’re ranking guys on some stupid list like this, discussing the value of a contract or talking about a team’s ceiling. But it’s the wrong question.
Right now, there are four guys in the league who can be the best player on a championship team: LeBron James, James Harden, Kawhi Leaonard, and whichever of Steph Curry or Kevin Durant you prefer to think of as “better.” When Anthony Davis gets traded to Boston, the list expands to five.
If you look through the history of the league, that’s about average for any given point in time. Dame not making the cut doesn’t make him any less valuable. It also doesn’t change the fact that 29 other teams would kill to have him and would give up a ton if Portland ever did put him on the market.