Damian Lillard Is On An Epic Scoring Surge

As the saying goes: all good things must come to an end.

So when Damian Lillard of the Portland Trail Blazers finished with “only” 21 points and 9 rebounds in their loss to the Denver Nuggets on Tuesday, it’s ironic to think that those statistical outputs should be viewed in a negative light.

Yet, those numbers are marked step down from the historic scoring tear that Lillard had been on for the past two weeks or so. Even when you factor in the numbers from the aforementioned loss against the Nuggets, Lillard has been averaging 44.9 points and 10.0 assists per game since January 20th, hitting over 52% of his shots – including a whopping 54.3% of his free throw attempts. That latter number is even more impressive, considering he’s averaging over 13 three-point attempts per game.

Heading into Tuesday night’s game against Denver, Lillard was named the NBA’s Player of the Week (for the Western Conference) for Week 15 of the NBA season. During that week, he had three straight games with at least 36 points and 10 assists. But, as mentioned, his current scoring bender truly began back on January 20th, when he dropped a Portland franchise-record 61 points on the suddenly lowly Golden State Warriors, helping Portland pull out the 129-124 win. To make matters even more impressive, Lillard had 10 rebounds and 7 assists in the win.

Portland dropped their following game against the Dallas Mavericks, despite Lillard going for 47 points, 8 assists, and 6 rebounds. But three days later, Lillard again hit the 50-point scoring mark, when he scored that amount – and added 13 assists and 6 rebounds – in Portland’s win over the Indiana Pacers.

Following Lillard’s triple-double, where he had 36 points, 11 assists, and 10 rebounds in Portland’s win over the Houston Rockets, Lillard connected on seven 3-point attempts as part of his 48-point scoring outburst, and tallied 10 assists and 9 rebounds against the Los Angeles Lakers, in a game coming in the aftermath of the horrible Kobe Bryant tragedy.

And to top off his scoring bender, Lillard had 51 points and 12 assists in the Trail Blazers’ resounding win over the Utah Jazz on February 1st. Not only did Portland send Utah to its season-high fourth loss in a row, but the 17-point win was the second-highest victory margin for Portland in 2020.

Not coincidentally, the Trail Blazers went 5-2 during that stretch, and suddenly find themselves back in contention for the 8th seed (or better) in the Western Conference Playoffs picture. As of Wednesday evening, they trailed the (equally hot) Memphis Grizzlies by a three-game margin. As one might imagine, the three games remaining between the two teams – they have yet to play each other this season – could figure to be a critical tiebreaker come April.

As far as Lillard, he once again finds his name being mentioned among the game’s very best players. While he wasn’t selected to be one of the starters in the 2020 NBA All-Star game, he was a consensus All-Star selection, and is starting to garner some “buzz” for potential votes in the Most Valuable Player race (in an admittedly jam-packed field). But some of Lillard’s opponents, including Utah Jazz star Donovan Mitchell, have already started using the term “MVP” when describing Lillard’s level of play this season.