When you think of the best players in the NBA, it’s a near-guarantee you’d name a bunch of other stars before you’d get to Damian Lillard.
But after the Portland Trail Blazers guard cooked Russell Westbrook and the Oklahoma City Thunder for a second straight game in their first round NBA playoff series, it’s time for us to stop underrating the man known as Dame.
Why do we not talk more about Lillard? I think it’s a combination of factors. It’s partially because he plays for a West coast franchise that’s been good enough to make the playoffs every year but once (but hasn’t gotten beyond the second round) since it drafted Lillard sixth overall in 2012 out of Weber State, not exactly a program that’s considered a college hoops powerhouse. It’s also because a player like Westbrook puts up gaudy triple-double numbers night after night, while Lillard is the model of quiet consistency.
Yet there’s Lillard, picking up a team that lost Jusuf Nurkic and toughing it out on a night with 29 points, six assists, three steals and two blocks. There was this buzzer-beater in which he completely flummoxed Raymond Felton:
What about this ridiculous shot?
He bounced back from a brutal screen from Steven Adams:
Everyone noticed how he outplayed Westbrook, and Lillard wasn’t afraid to be physical with his fellow California native:
That led to these takes:
All I know is Lillard might take down Westbrook, and in the process, he might make believers out of a lot more NBA fans.
