Damian Lillard, Portland Trail Blazers.
The NBA regular season is almost at an end. So that makes now a critical time for the Portland Trail Blazers to hit their peak. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case. The Blazers are struggling right now. The good news is there is a solution. The bad news there is only one solution, and it’s a risky play. Damian Lillard needs a rest.
Can the rest of the Blazers pick up the slack and win games without Damian? That is the big question. Most likely, this won’t happen. Dame is a great competitor. All great competitors want to compete all the time for as long as they can. Also, Terry Stotts won’t make this drastic of a change.
The Blazers head coach is stuck in his mediocre successful ways. Sure, Stotts piled up wins, but tell me, what coach who has led one team for as long as Stotts has who didn’t pile up wins? Where’s the hardware for all his successful coaching?
But getting back to the matter at hand, Lillard is gassed. In other words, Dame time needs chill time. He’s played every game this year except for TWO! Remember when CJ McCollum was out with his foot injury? Damian played extra minutes to keep the team in games and avoid getting too buried in the playoff standings. The cost for that price has come due. Here’s a look at the month-to-month minutes logged by Damian this year.
For the year, Dame averages 35.9 minutes a game. Those numbers in parenthesis are the number of minutes-per-game per month that he played more than 36 minutes per game. April still has 10 games left, so you can reasonably expect that April’s number to grow. With only nine games in May, how many times will Dame be asked, no required, to go over 36 minutes a game?
Let’s look at Dame’s stats in comparison with the minutes he’s logged.
| FG% | 3P% | FT% | REB | AST | BLK | STL | TO | PTS | W/L | |
| December | 40 | 28.9 | 92.6 | 4.5 | 6.3 | 0.5 | 0.8 | 3.8 | 23 | 2-2 |
| January | 47.2 | 41.2 | 94.6 | 4.9 | 7.5 | 0.1 | 0.9 | 3.0 | 31.5 | 8-6 |
| February | 43.4 | 36.9 | 92.8 | 3.8 | 9.1 | 0.3 | 1.1 | 3.5 | 30.2 | 7-6 |
| March | 44.6 | 37.8 | 95.6 | 4.1 | 7.4 | 0.2 | 0.6 | 2.9 | 29.8 | 10-4 |
| April | 38.4 | 37.3 | 76.5 | 3.3 | 6.0 | 0.5 | 1.2 | 2.7 | 20.2 | 2-4 |
| Year | 44.1 | 37.8 | 92.7 | 4.2 | 7.6 | 0.3 | 0.9 | 3.1 | 28.7 | 31-22 |
Maybe, he’ is just in a slump. That’s the best-case scenario. The worst case is disheartening for Blazers fans; Lillard is tired and has tired legs. Now let’s look at Dame’s stats during the time McCollum was out with his injury. From January 16 to March 15, Lillard stats are as follows:
| Min | FG% | 3P% | FT% | REB | AST | BLK | STL | TO | PTS | W/L |
| 35.95 | 45.1 | 37.1 | 91 | 4.1 | 8.4 | 0.2 | 1.1 | 3.4 | 31.4 | 15-11 |
During that stretch of 25 games, in 12 of them, Lillard played over his 2020-21 average of 36 minutes. All this says, well, a lot, and it’s not good. What we thought was a deep Portland Trail Blazers team is not. The Blazers don’t have a reliable bench. Some fans are trying to crucify Stotts and GM Neil Olshey for trading Gary Trent Jr. after the guard’s recent explosion for Toronto. Don’t get me started.
Even with CJ back, the Blazers are only 8-6. So again, the Blazers go as far as Lillard goes. The addition of Norman Powell is a boost. He’s a reliable third scorer behind Lillard and McCollum. He seamlessly fits in with this team and handled himself like a pro. It’s too small of a sample to tell exactly how Powell’s presence affects the rest of the players on the team. But the eye test says he’s a big add.
Dame recently laid it out bluntly about the team’s performance against playoff teams. To paraphrase, the Blazers stink. On the year, the Blazers are 11-18 against playoff teams. Even worse, over their last 11 games against playoff teams, Portland is 3-8 and currently on a four-game losing streak to playoff teams.
That stat doesn’t bode well, considering the playoffs are just around the corner. It’s even a tough road up to that point as 16 of their next 19 games are against playoff teams. Part of the reason they have so many games against playoff teams is that there are more teams in the postseason. This year the NBA agreed to expand the playoffs to 10 teams in both conferences.
The first six teams will be locked in, but teams seven and eight will have play-in games. The breakdown is simple. Team 7 will host Team 8, with the winner earning the seventh seed. Team 9 will host team 10, with the winner going on to play the loser from the 7-vs.-8th game. That winner becomes the eighth seed. Currently, the Blazers are the 6th seed; they have no margin for error.
So, what does all this mean? Players that log heavy minutes usually end up getting injured. The worst injury from being overworked is an injury to the Achilles tendon. Most of the stars in the league play in the low 30 minutes range. It’s enough for them to dominate and impact the game while not being overworked. When players start logging more than 35 minutes per night, it significantly increases the risk of injury.
Stotts needs to rest Damian when he can. Possibly his best course of action is to give Dame some DNP-coaches decision or reporting an “injured” hamstring or quad. Dame won’t like it, but sometimes a coach has to protect a player from his self.
Stotts and Olshey need to say to their star, “You can continue to play and flirt with the possibility of injury. Maybe an injury severe enough to take you out for the rest of this year and into a portion of next year. Or you can rest, and we can make a stronger push towards and in the playoffs.”
The Blazers will be a playoff team this season; that much is almost all but guaranteed. The question is, what will they do in the playoffs? If the playoffs started today, Portland faces the Clippers. If the Blazers overtake the Lakers, they will face Denver. Or if the Blazers fall back, they’re in the play-in games set to take on Memphis at least once, maybe twice, or San Antonio. Then the Blazers open a series against Phoenix.
With everything that I just laid out here, the next question is, what do the Portland Trail Blazers do?
The reality is Lillard is gassed. Stotts has to rest Dame when and where he can. If the Blazers are blowing out or getting blown out, pull him from the game. Sprinkle those moments with at least a game or two of him as a DNP, preferably against some bottom-dwelling teams (for example, Charlotte, Cleveland, and Houston).
This strategy also forces the rest of the team to step up. Because right now, the Blazers lack a capable bench to help alleviate some of the burdens currently on Damian’s shoulders.
The Trail Blazers bench has to prove they can get the job done when Damian isn’t there to bail them out. There are enough veterans on the squad that they should be able to handle this task.
Unfortunately, history already tells us the answer to this question. Even if Lillard is exhausted, Stotts will continue to do the same old same old. Play Dame in every game and have him log heavy minutes to get victories. That strategy is flirting with disaster. If Lillard goes down, the Blazers season goes down with him.
Portland needs victories to stay out of the play-in games. Moreover, they also need a rested Damian Lillard if they want to make a deep playoff run. A fully healthy and fresh Portland Trail Blazers team can be scary in the playoffs.
Do you think the Portland Trail Blazers need to give Damian Lillard more rest over the next month? Let us know in the comments section below or on social media.