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As fleeting as love is, being loved consistently by NBA Twitter is an even more tenuous task, like holding water in your hand. Yeah, it’s there, but any sudden movements and it casually glides through your fingers.

Damian Lillard is a fascinating case study in what our modern day athletes are up against on social media. Wild approval swings, often containing little rhyme or reason, are shaping the perception of players places in history. The chronological story of Damian Lillard in the 2019 playoffs underscores the problem with sports commentary today.

HHSR first called out Lillard’s playoff inadequacies in our first-round NBA Playoffs piece. In a nutshell, we highlighted the positive press the Weber State product had received in spite of his postseason shortcomings, though the general public had already collectively concluded he was superior to proven big game talents.

“Lillard has reached this status despite failing to get out of the first round in each of the last two years (both sweeps), and suffering a first round L in 2015 (4-1) when LaMarcus Aldridge was still his teammate. The only recent playoff success Dame Dolla has seen came in 2016 when Portland was getting clobbered by the Clippers in round one, only to see the series turn instantly when Chris Paul and Blake Griffin both got injured in Game 4…Did everyone forget last season when Lillard was locked up by Jrue Holiday, leading to the Blazers sweep at the hands of the lower seeded Pelicans? Dame averaged under 19 points and five assists for the series, shooting an abysmal .361 from the field and .280 from three, and four turnovers per game.”

April 17, 2019

Two games into his first-round series against Oklahoma City, people were drinking the Dame Kool-Aid like it cured male pattern baldness, as he posted a 29.5 point average in two victories. Instantly, the masses seemed to agree he was vastly superior to his point guard counterpart Russell Westbrook, even though Russ has accomplished far more in his career by just about any metric.

April 21, 2019

Lillard’s next two games in OKC were considerably less impressive, but few would notice, presumably because they only glanced at the box score. A closer examination was conducted on this site. The Blazers split those games.

Lillard only had two good quarters out of eight in Oklahoma City (the third quarter of each game—sounds like nitpicking, sure, but seriously, look it up).

Then Game 5 happened and all hell broke loose.

April 24, 2019

The “this is ‘Damian Lillard’s moment’” think pieces began to fly up in earnest. This was “his moment” according to ESPN and The Ringer, and ClutchPoints; SB Nation declared that Dame “deserved this”, while Sports Illustrated dubbed Dame, “the best story of the NBA Playoffs”. Twitter launched into a frenzy typically reserved for a new Beyoncé video. HHSR even held our L for having doubted him coming into the series. But a funny thing happened on the way to crowing Lillard the third-best guard in the NBA…

He began to stink.

May 12, 2019

Following a stellar Game 1 in the Conference Semis against Denver, Dame Time (while the scoring average was decent) posted field goal percentages of 29.4, 41.7, 40.9, 42.9, 47.8 and 17.6 over the next six games. The worst of those six came in Game 7 on the road, the type of game you rely on A-list superstars to pull you through (especially when it’s “their moment”). In fairness, Damian made some critical plays down the stretch of that game that helped Portland pull off the upset, but it was CJ McCollum’s 37 points that proved most heroic.

This is a classic example of when fans place too much emphasis on team success when judging an individual. Lillard got a complete pass for his Game 7 (and his entire Denver series) play in the moment because his teammates rescued Portland’s season. But if the superstar plays like LeBron when he did his best Uma Thurman Kill Bill impersonation versus Orlando in 2009, nobody cares because he lost the series. Don’t believe it? Look at the comments on this tweet. HHSR again pointed out the Lillard hypocrisy.

During Game 5 of the Nuggets series, an interesting piece of info was also revealed:

May 14, 2019

Dame’s struggles continued into his first ever (in seven seasons) Conference Finals appearance. In Game 1, he had another subpar game, scoring just 19 points on 33% shooting with seven turnovers in a blowout loss to the Durant-less Warriors. May 16 was more of the same—another below average 23 points on 37.5% shooting. The guy who likes to point at his wrist late in games scored just six points on 2-6 shooting in the fourth quarter as his team squandered a 17-point second half lead. Before the evening ended, analysts were already offering up theories on Dame’s puzzling performance.

May 18, 2019

With the season on life support, Game 3 in Portland again was not one of Lillard’s best—19 points on 5-18 shooting and five turnovers in 40 minutes. He scored nine points on 3-12 shooting in the second half, as the Trail Blazers let an 18-point lead slip. After the game, more unfortunate news regarding Lillard began to surface.

Sidebar: Sort of an odd report, right? Is it a rib fracture or not? What exactly is a rib separation anyway?

Few in the NBA universe seemed empathetic for an Oklahoma City team who limped to the finish line as Damian Lillard drove the final dagger into them like a Mortal Kombat character, even following the aforementioned four-surgery report came to light. Yet here we were, forced to make a make a choice on whether or not to excuse Lillard’s play…except his shortcomings dated all the way back to Game 2 of the Denver series.

May 20, 2019

Portland’s season ended as Lillard could only muster two points in overtime of Game 4 (after another blown lead of 17 points at home). Although some still felt compelled to remind us that Dame “went out on his sword“.

Botched clichés aside, as we take full inventory of Damian Lillard, what do we have here?

  • A top 12 player in the NBA manages to win only one playoff series in the last four years (which he only won due to his opponent’s two All-Stars getting injured), including playing horrifically in a four-game sweep at the hands of a worse team in 2018.
  • In 2019, he plays well in two home games, largely stinks in two road games, then puts up an all-time 50-point performance in a closeout Game 5, including one of the greatest buzzer beaters in league history.
  • He struggles through the next two rounds, with his team winning in the second round mostly in spite of him, and is swept in the Western Conference Finals.

Damian Lillard is recognized by many as the third best guard in the NBA, and he might be, but it’s far from a certainty. Here’s the thing: where are all the jokes? Where are the stupid memes? Why did the world lose their collective mind when he had two good home games to start a series, forgetting everything that happened a year earlier? Why don’t we keep that same energy when discussing Lillard as when we address contemporary point guards like Russell Westbrook, Chris Paul and Kyrie Irving (we won’t even bring LeBron into this discussion)? People cannot wait to trash Westbrook and Paul when things go south for them in the playoffs, and Irving joined the club this season.

The reason is simple, really—we just like Damian Lillard more.

Dame didn’t pout and leave his guys in search of a superteam. He says all the right things, always stays healthy, tries really hard (without playing dirty), dresses and acts like an adult and he can rap a little bit. These are things we can’t say about the other trio, but peak CP3 was clearly a better player, while Russ has had better numbers and team success, and Kyrie is just as clutch and has a championship ring to prove it.

This all comes off extremely critical of Lillard, when it really isn’t intended to be. He’s a great player who lost to a better team—no shame in that. We just can’t continue judging players strictly off who we like versus who we don’t like. Dame has been afforded a different set of rules than his counterparts. We could start trashing him too, but a better solution might be to take a more even-handed approach when conversing about today’s great players.