Post#53 » by HeartBreakKid » Wed Apr 7, 2021 3:40 pm
I feel like if you care about playoff resilience it's very hard to justify Damian Lillard as a top ten player. He has been beaten up pretty much every year in the playoffs.
Usually when big time stars play with bad teams it is expected they will lose - but usually the star will still look like he is in the same class as the other team's opposing star, or at least like an MVP caliber player.
When the Blazers lose, whether it is against a comparable team or a much better team - it is not rare for Damian Lillard to look 2nd rate to the opposing team's franchise player. That is a pretty big red flag, and it makes me question why people love to giggle about Playoff P (I guess cause he calls himself that and he has played for many clubs) but everyone always has amnesia about Damian Lillard.
This question is more interesting because we can pretty much omit Davis and Durant because they have barely played this season - though it is rather obvious to me they are both much better players than Damian Lillard.
This would leave in some order
Jokic
Embiid
Giannis
James
Harden
Leonard
Curry
Those guys are pretty much the premier superstars of the league. Yeah sure, you can say Lillard is like Curry but we know Curry's game translates better in the post season, and generally speaking impact stats favor him. For what ever reason, even in this section, people tend to just PPG+TS watch with Lillard (I know he has legit crazy gravity but I see people focus more on his PPG/TS% combination).
That means Lillard at best is the 8th best player. Now, I'm kind of being nice because I think Luka Doncic is better than Damian Lillard. I get it - they're both 30 point, efficient PG's. That's great, but there are a few things that make me consider Luka - some are obvious and not really debatable, others might be more controversial
First the obvious
He is a better playmaker and floor general than Lillard. Their APG is "close", but I feel like if you watch both players you see Luka has a better feel for the game - and we already know this has translated to him running the best offense in 2020 and he didn't exactly get worse this year.
He is also a better defender. Might say but isn't Luka like some fat euro guy, he's not a defensive player! Yeah, he's not really a defensive guy, but Lillard is all types of bad on defense - he's one of the worst defenders in the league, the only star player who is a worse defender than him is Trae Young which isn't saying much.
Now the more controversial - I think Luka is a better scorer than Lillard despite that being Lillard's "thing". If you just compare their RS numbers than Lillard is clearly a more efficient scorer by like +2TS% or so.
But this kind of dates back to "feel for the game", the way Luka scores seems more natural, he just has a better feel for the game. Eye test is one thing, but again, we know that Luka's style of play creates not just elite offenses, but all time ones. Dallas isn't that team this season, but my guess is that the reason why they're only 10th and not #1 doesn't start with Luka.
As I stated before I believe playoff resilience is important, and what a player actually plays like in the playoffs is the true representation of how good a player is. I am not talking about clutchness or the nerves, I am flat out talking about tournament play in not only basketball but any sport or game is entirely different from non-tournament play.
We have a enough of a sample size where you can say that Damian Lillard is not a true 30 point 60+ TS% type of guy in the post season.
We have a small sample size showing Luka does just fine.
Normally a small sample size wouldn't benefit someone, but in this case we kind of "know" Lillard isn't that great of a scorer in the post season - at least with Luka there is a chance he might continue to be one.
My post is almost entirely negative about Lillard so it's going to come off like I am saying he is a scrub. But I am really saying he's not a real 30 ppg guy, he's a regular season player. Maybe he'd play with other stars and be way better, but he doesn't want to do that so we don't know how that would work (and Luka doesnt have any other stars either).
So Luka bumps Lillard to #9.
That leaves the "unsexy" names left. You have your Rudy Goberts and Ben Simmons - they're defenders and not scorers so the arguments for why they are better or not are obvious. You have CP3, who beat up Damian Lillard last time they played but we don't know how far removed from CP3's prime he really is. You have Jimmy Butler who puts up unsexy numbers and because the Heat are not doing that great people have died down on his narrative. Theres George....who people kind of hate but he's not having a bad season at all and he's hardly why the Clippers are "underperforming" (they're the third seed in the west, their RS meltdown is greatly exaggerated). There's Kyrie Irving who I think is overrated, but he does a lot of the things Lillard does on the surface.
Of those guys, I feel like I would take Jimmy Butler over Lillard, and Butler was a better player than Lillard most seasons since their primes started. I also am pretty confident in Rudy Gobert.
So no, Lillard is probably not a top ten player. He certainly wouldn't be with Durant and Davis playing, but even without them the odds aren't great. He can have a 50 point game tomorrow, but it wouldn't change my opinion because I've seen him do that for several seasons now.