Confident Lillard has Blazers believing
Lillard’s confidence has Blazers believing they’re a dangerous bunch
Martin Rogers: Buzzer beater turns Portland from afterthought to menace
Confidence courses through Damian Lillard’s veins at all times, but this is something different. Confidence is the ability to keep shooting amid a slump or to walk tall when others doubt you.
Deliberately waiting until the final second before uncorking a game-deciding, series-clinching 3-pointer from 37 feet, just because you can? That’s true belief.
Had his Tuesday night buzzer-beating bomb missed, then attempting it could legitimately have been called foolhardiness. Oklahoma City’s Paul George said that regardless of the outcome it was a “bad shot.” There won’t be anyone in Portland who agrees with him.
Lillard’s long-range magic act to seal Game 5 and bump the Thunder out of the NBA postseason erased any insecurities the Trail Blazers had as a result of their empty recent playoff history. And, in that instant, turned his team from an afterthought into a dangerous, prowling menace that has undergone a character overhaul in recent weeks.
As the regular season wound down, Lillard and his colleagues were the team every lower seed in the Western Conference wanted to face. Without Jusuf
Nurkic, the influential big man who went down with a leg injury in March, the Blazers looked ripe for an upset and offered a far more palatable option than any of the other top seeds.
Things look very different now. Tuesday’s heroics meant that the Blazers were the first team from the West to clinch their series, with George and Russell Westbrook and the Thunder’s antagonistic approach no more than a fleeting obstacle.
At least one statistical model believes the Trail Blazers still have as low a chance of making the Finals as anyone (Eastern Conference teams included).
If perception means anything in this game, let’s say this — they don’t feel like a team with nothing more than forlorn hope. A city is buzzing behind them, they are finding ways to win and adversity has proved to be a driving force.
Despite Lillard’s name, status and capacity for a 50-point haul, there are a multitude of intangibles that dictate why Portland is still alive. The Blazers are a group that came together when they might have splintered, getting stronger when Nurkic, who raised the roof at the Moda Center on Tuesday with his courtside fist-pump and roars of encouragement, saw his season end.
The team came into the playoffs hot, having won 11 of 13. C.J. McCollum complements Lillard like a dream and sometimes takes over the bulk of the heavy lifting, while coach Terry Stotts has unearthed meaningful production from Enes Kanter, who was given up on by the hapless Knicks a few months back.
The Blazers’ 10 consecutive playoff game losses over the past three years, including last year’s sweep by the Pelicans? Long forgotten now.
Next up will be a meeting with Denver, unless the Nuggets let their 3-2 series advantage over the Spurs slip.
The postseason is young and there are surely countless twists to come. No one, not even in the Pacific Northwest, is proclaiming the Trail Blazers as the team of destiny. But they’ve changed their own destiny already, so who knows what might be next?
“When you keep fighting and you keep working through (adversity) and stay together, there’s a reward waiting for you,” Lillard told TNT after Tuesday’s win. “We kept working, and I think this is the beginning of our result.”
Are you brave enough to argue with the man who took the most audacious shot of the season and made it?