Damian Lillard is unguardable and his ultra-long-range shooting is changing the game
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Thursday 20 August 2020 23:20, UK
Damian Lillard has been the NBA's best player since the restart and there is nothing the Los Angeles Lakers - or anyone - can do to stop the game-changing guard, writes Sky Sports NBA analyst Mark Deeks.
Live NBA: Portland @LA Lakers GM 2
Basketball used to be the bigger man's game. Now, it's not.
It used to be the case that teams without premium big men lived and died by the jump shot. Certainly, that was universally-held piece of groupthink that saw teams always trying to fire the ball into the paint and play from the inside out, rather than embracing the value of the extra points available from outside the three-point line. Now, they do not.
It used to be the case that front offices would aim to build their teams around having the best big man available, and then figuring the guards out later. Not now. And it seems we are getting further away from that old-school mentality all the time.
In Game 1 of their first-round playoff series against the Portland Trail Blazers, the Los Angeles Lakers repeatedly looked for the services of their star big man Anthony Davis. 'AD' is not far short of being the perfect big man, particularly in the modern era - big yet fast, long yet surprisingly strong, and incredibly skilled offensively. Davis is the ultimate finisher offensively and an excellent and versatile defender.
However, he - like all big men - needs setting up. Davis may be the perfect second fiddle in how he offers vertical spacing, spot-up shooting outside the three-point line, turnarounds from the post, devastating finishing on the roll and the ability to run the court better than almost all of his peers.
He is also able to take turns handling up top in a way historically so antithetical to a player of his size. But even with that, he is not bringing the ball up the court more than occasionally. He is not creating offense out of the pick-and-roll. And he is the one setting high ball screens rather than calling for them.
You know who is doing all of that that? Damian Lillard.
The best player since the season's restart, Dame came through once again in Game 1, his 34-point outing the difference in what was - by the standards of the modern NBA - a grind-it-out half-court game.
Davis shot 8-of-24 from the field and was not hitting those mid-range shots the Lakers need from him to offset their lack of outside shooting efficiency and versatility. Lillard, meanwhile, continues to quite literally change the game.
It is not hyperbolic to say that just as Stephen Curry changed the game over the last few years with his relentless three-point shooting, especially off the dribble, Lillard has changed it further by doing the same from further back.
Shooting from 35 feet has been normalised by him almost single-handedly - he has shot 42.4 per cent on 125 such attempts from between 30-39 feet this season, and both the volume and efficiency from that range are historic. Threes from that range used to be bailouts only. Now, they are by design, even in clutch situations.
In our previous look at the Blazers, we looked at the fact that they figured not to match up well against Davis and LeBron James, given their lack of frontcourt defense and perimeter forwards of calibre.
What we did not talk about was how the Lakers have no match-up for Lillard, whatsoever. Short-handed at guard anyway with the absences of Rajon Rondo and Avery Bradley, the Lakers have no one with the speed to keep tabs on him in isolation at the point guard position, nor through all the screens he uses.
The only big man they have who can nearly keep up with him on switches without heavily dropping back is Davis. Yet Davis does not like to play the five (center) spot, thus limiting the switching options that they have - a simple call for a screen by whoever is being guarded by a non-Davis big is always going to be in Dame's favour, no matter the defensive strategy - and anyone who drops back on defense against him has routinely been absolutely battered by the long-range pull-ups.
The difficulty of these shots is surpassed only by the difficulty in defending them. You are supposed to want teams to shoot from ridiculously far away, even today, when everyone wants to be a shooter. Yet Lillard is so good at them that defenders feel the need to play closer to him.
If they do so, though, then he burns them off the dribble, and the ball screens starting from just inside the half court line allows him to attack bigs at full speed. He is even deliberately being run off screens that far away in a way that Curry never was. Lillard has taken what Steph did, which was already unguardable, and made it even harder to defend. What are you to do?
What the Lakers need to do is get it back going the other way. Yet in Game 1, their troubling recent lack of scoring and shooting came to the fore once again. The Lakers as a team shot 5-of-32 from three-point range, with Danny Green in particular bricking so badly he sounded like he was building a shed, and also went a really bad 7-of-26 in transition.
Given that they are going against a sub-par Blazers defense - this is only the third time all season Portland have held a team to below 99 points - the Lakers' offensive futility, which has been going on for a while now, is troubling for their title aspirations.
You can't fault LeBron here. Especially when considering his age and his mileage, it was yet another tremendous performance from him in Game 1, a huge triple-double bordering on 20-20-20 territory. He was finding the shooters - they just were not finding the bottom of the net.
The biggest sinner in that respect was Davis, who got the line quite frequently but missed many of the short turnarounds, mid-rangers and perimeter spot-ups that his team needs him to make, just as he has done all season.
It turns out that the pull-up 35-foot jump shot is more unguardable, more destructive and thus more indispensable than the efficient close-in looks of one of the most skilled big men of all time. Welcome to the modern NBA.
Nonetheless, caution should be counselled about the prospect of this being another 'Iverson Sweep'. In the 2001 NBA Finals, the Philadelphia 76ers took Game 1 against a Lakers team that were expected to dominate them, through the individual brilliance of Allen Iverson, that era's version of Lillard.
The 2001 Lakers however swept rest of the series on the way to their second consecutive NBA championship, behind the play of the late Kobe Bryant and, more importantly, a still-prime Shaquille O'Neal.
Although Dikembe Mutombo was about as good of an option for defending Shaq as there could be, no one stopped Shaq back then. Now, no one stops Dame Lillard.
No one stops LeBron James either - although Wenyen Gabriel did a pretty good job, out of nowhere - but you could at least scheme your entire defense to try and prevent Shaq from getting the ball or at least slowing it down. Or of course fouling and sending him to the line. Good luck doing any of that with Dame.
The Lakers will adjust, and hopefully, they will do so by playing Davis more at the five (center) spot, even if he doesn't want to. This is not the series for Dwight Howard or JaVale McGee. Effective though they are in their own ways, the fact that the Blazers are using the Jusuf Nurkic/Hassan Whiteside pairing does give the Lakers something to attack going back the other way.
If they can get out more in transition (and finish better once there), get Davis rolling to the rim more often, hit their open shots and post up James more often, they should still triumph. Their supporting cast is better than Portland's.
There is not, however, much of a defence for what Lillard has been doing now for the last couple of months. The only real defensive strategy for him is, don't sag off too far.
Beyond that, he can just get what he wants. Just like Shaq used to.
