Better PG: Lillard or Ja Morant

mdonnelly1989 · Post #1 » by **mdonnelly1989** » Sat Dec 17, 2022 4:18 am

This is Extremely close to me. I don't think Ja hit Dames peak yet but he's awfully close.

Him getting injured in last years playoffs hurt his case imo. I need to see how does in a healthy playoff run.

And there was a time 2 years ago when Lillard was a bonafide top 10 player in the league.

threethehardway · Post #2 » by **threethehardway** » Sat Dec 17, 2022 6:03 am

Ja Morant is nowhere near Dame Lillard as a player, even right now, cone on man.

Look, Ja Morant is my favorite player in the league right now. But he's in a long list of early 2000s perimeter starts whose game look better than how effective it actually is.

Ja Morant is AI 2.0. He's a must see star no matter who he is playing because he will do something that nobody else his size can do.

Unlike Ai, Ja doesn't feel like his team lives and dies with every shot he takes, so he has no problem sitting plays out and letting his teammates do him.

Ja's jumpshot is trash. He can't score effectively from anywhere on the court but rim to 10 feet in. His defensive intensity is lacking.

He's just the bail-out middling efficiency volume scoring on-ball guard on a well balanced team. He benefits from being an exciting player and winning early thus he is overrated.

Dame on the other hand had an argument for being the best offensive player in 2019-2020 and 2020-2021.

If Dame cared about winning rings, he should've forced his way to the Bucks when they were looking for an upgrade from Eric Bledsoe. Instead he cares about being the guy and making a crap ton of money.

So he's been playing meaningless basketball games for half of his career so he's underrated.

At the end of the day, championships and winning seasons is an organizational achievement. The Blazers suck and Dame made is gonna make over a quarter billion dollars in his career.
'

SpreeS · Post #3 » by **SpreeS** » Sat Dec 17, 2022 10:34 am

Young/Lillard/Morant/Mitchell - one father son’s

mdonnelly1989 · Post #4 » by **mdonnelly1989** » Mon Dec 19, 2022 8:31 pm

threethehardway wrote:Ja Morant is nowhere near Dame Lillard as a player, even right now, cone on man.

Look, Ja Morant is my favorite player in the league right now. But he's in a long list of early 2000s perimeter starts whose game look better than how effective it actually is.

Ja Morant is AI 2.0. He's a must see star no matter who he is playing because he will do something that nobody else his size can do.

Unlike Ai, Ja doesn't feel like his team lives and dies with every shot he takes, so he has no problem sitting plays out and letting his teammates do him.

Ja's jumpshot is trash. He can't score effectively from anywhere on the court but rim to 10 feet in. His defensive intensity is lacking.

He's just the bail-out middling efficiency volume scoring on-ball guard on a well balanced team. He benefits from being an exciting player and winning early thus he is overrated.

Dame on the other hand had an argument for being the best offensive player in 2019-2020 and 2020-2021.

If Dame cared about winning rings, he should've forced his way to the Bucks when they were looking for an upgrade from Eric Bledsoe. Instead he cares about being the guy and making a crap ton of money.

So he's been playing meaningless basketball games for half of his career so he's underrated.

At the end of the day, championships and winning seasons is an organizational achievement. The Blazers suck and Dame made is gonna make over a quarter billion dollars in his career.
'

Dame is winning the poll but it's not suggestive of them not being close. I'd still take Dame, but there are/were things he couldn't do that Ja can. Ja is more athletic, much better driver. And Dame was always known as a bad defensive PG.

I also take into account recency biased in these polls. I'd give Damien Lillard a 92/93 at his peak which he's about right now. Ja is somewhere around a 91 IMO. But also lets see what he does in the playoffs.

RCM88x · Post #5 » by **RCM88x** » Tue Dec 20, 2022 1:07 pm

If Ja's shooting so far this year is for real I might take him. I like Ja's ability to pressure the defense at the rim and his defense is way better I think (at least potential wise).

Bad Gatorade · Post #6 » by **Bad Gatorade** » Tue Dec 20, 2022 2:45 pm

RCM88x wrote:If Ja's shooting so far this year is for real I might take him. I like Ja's ability to pressure the defense at the rim and his defense is way better I think (at least potential wise).

Just a minor note - although Ja was on fire early in the season (TS% of 67.7 in 6 October games), he has actually slowed down precipitously since then. In 12 November games, Ja has a TS% of 51.0, and in 6 December games, 49.0. This adds up to 54.8 on the season thus far. Given the league average is 57.5 TS% at the time of writing this, I'm not sure Ja's shooting is really a selling point.

Ja's also at 33.9% from 3 and 73.4% from the line, which are (also) far cries from the 14/25 from 3 and 54/63 he shot from the line back in October.

Peregrine01 · Post #7 » by **Peregrine01** » Tue Dec 20, 2022 4:35 pm

This is Dame for me fairly comfortably. There might be nothing on offense that Ja does better except for finishing at the rim. Defensively, it’s more of a wash but Ja gets bullied by bigger guards more than Dame does imo.

Post #8 » by **tsherkin** » Tue Dec 20, 2022 9:44 pm

Interesting question.

Dame is in his prime. He's a hot scorer and a pretty good playmaker. Good enough to do what he does, and also skilled enough off-ball to share. HIs impact on Portland is clear enough (12-7 with him, 5-7 without him is pretty loud and clear, if simplistic, but they are +12 in team ORTG with him on the court).

Lillard is obviously Ja's dramatic superior as a scoring threat. There's a reason Morant is 95 TS+ / -2.7% rTS, 113 ORTG and +5.3 OBPM and Dame is doing the 112 / +2.9%, 124, +7.5 thing at the moment. Lillard's 4th in the league in oEPM at the moment at +7.1 (one of only four players in the league at +7.0 or better with Doncic, Curry, and Jokic); Morant is 21st at +3.9.

There is a pretty large gap on offense driven by Lillard's shooting prowess. Not to take much away from Ja, who is doing good things, but he's an inefficient scorer with weak finishing ability away from the rim on a team whose offensive success is driven by ball protection and offensive rebounding. 6'5 and shorter with 15+ GP, Ja ranks 22nd in ORB%, for what it is worth, though his ball protection relative to usage and how often he drives is actually pretty impressive. 12.8% TOV against 35.8% usage and 56-57% of his attempts inside 10 feet is very good. The Grizz are remarkably average in 3pt shooting, too, which of course doesn't do a lot to enable him... but conversely, he also isn't enabling others with range, so that's at least something of a trade-off. Also, his limp FT shooting does contribute to a team weakness: they are the 5th-worst in the league in FT/FGA, and Ja does contribute to that because whilst a mediocre FT shooter, he is quite good at drawing fouls. They leave lots of points on the board that way. We are early enough that the degree to which that will be a problem is up in the air, because some years he's at least a 76 or 77 percent FT shooter, which makes the issue less consequential, but he's been Bron'g it up recently, and that isn't helping.

Either way, this is exaggerated more so in comparison to someone like Dame, because Lillard is an 89% FT guy and one of the best 3pt shooters in league history, in the middle of what might turn out to be his best season from beyond the arc yet and is presently comparable to his 2020 season on slightly higher volume.

For me, this is Dame. Morant is exciting, and pretty effective, but to argue for him seems to me more like an investment in the future. Lillard is at the peak of his game right now but he'll go on for only so much longer. Morant, if he develops any hint of shooting ability to give his body a rest and to open up his game, has a much longer period of potential dominance in him.