Portland Trail Blazers: 3 takeaways from Game 3 vs. Pelicans
2. Pelicans defense has Dame’s number
Nurkic is Portland’s glaring weakness, but Damian Lillard’s no show in the 2018 NBA Playoffs is their most damning problem. It goes without saying that this 49-win team can’t win with its All-NBA point guard averaging 18.3 points, 4.3 assists and 4.3 rebounds per game on abysmal .327/.320/.917 shooting splits.
What happened to the dude emphatically smacking his wrist with two fingers? You know, the one who averaged 26.9 points, 6.6 assists and 4.5 rebounds per game on .439/.361/.916 shooting splits during the regular season?
Damian Lillard in this series:
— Josh Eberley 🇨🇦 (@JoshEberley) April 20, 2018
14 Turnovers
13 Assists
50 Points
52 Shots
It’d be easy to chalk up his downward spiral as yet another star player “choking,” but it’s not as simple as that, and doing so would be an insult to the exceptional defense he’s faced from Jrue Holiday and Rajon Rondo.
Simply put, they’ve made sure Lillard Time has become frozen in time.
Holiday had an All-Defensive First Team kind of season, and he’s proving it once again on the biggest stage. Meanwhile, we all know Playoff Rajon Rondo is a different beast entirely.
Pelicans head coach Alvin Gentry has done an excellent job throwing all kinds of traps at Lillard to force the ball from his hands, while the backcourt has made Dame work on the defensive end as well.
"They're making me give the ball up... this is different covers than I've seen in any point of my career." - @Dame_Lillard breaks down how effective the @PelicansNBA's defensive strategy has been #NBAPlayoffs pic.twitter.com/MsxcoMUAwP
— NBA TV (@NBATV) April 20, 2018
Unfortunately for the Blazers, Stotts has been unable to respond with countermeasures to make life easier on his All-Star point guard. McCollum waiting until Game 3 to have his first decent shooting night in weeks doesn’t help either.
No one should be condemning the season Lillard, Stotts or the Blazers had. This was a tough first round matchup, and Holiday and Gentry have risen to the occasion.
However, it’s worth noting that for all the “Lillard Time” disciples out there, other than the unforgettable shot he hit against the Houston Rockets to clinch a first round series in 2014, Lillard’s efficiency has fallen off each time the postseason rolls around Just look at his playoff splits if you don’t believe me.
I don't think Damian Lillard is unclutch, or a fraud, or anything stupid like that. But it's interesting how perceptions of "clutchness" tend to cement at the first high-profile moment, and then almost never change.
— Chris Towers …Is A Real Boy (@CTowersCBS) April 20, 2018
The only time the Blazers have made it out of the first round since that Houston shot was in 2016, when they faced a injury-depleted Los Angeles Clippers side.
It’s not time to overreact to Lillard’s clutch reputation or his star status, because the Pelicans’ defense deserves its due, but this is certainly something to keep an eye on when writing the post-mortem for the 2017-18 season.