This just might be Damian Lillard's time.
The Portland Trail Blazers' franchise player established himself in a new way last season, willing his team to the three seed in a loaded Western Conference with a career-best campaign culminating in an unlikely First Team All-NBA selection. One problem: Portland was embarrassed in the playoffs, swept out of the first round by the underdog New Orleans Pelicans, with Lillard emerging as the poster boy for the Blazers' widespread struggles.
Skepticism regarding Portland's postseason hopes one year later would have existed even if the ever-improved Jusuf Nurkic hadn't sustained a season-ending injury late last month. Given the rippling two-way effects of his absence and an unlucky first-round matchup with the Oklahoma City Thunder, favored in the series, the Blazers were widely expected to suffer another early playoff exit at the hands of a lower-seeded team, too.
Instead, as the series shifts to Oklahoma City, Portland has a commanding 2-0 lead, with Lillard re-staking his claim as one of the game's truly elite players to a national audience – not just as an imminently dangerous offensive force, but also the tone-setter in a long-simmering division rivalry that grew more heated than ever during the regular season.
The raw numbers speak for themselves: 29.5 points, 4.0 rebounds, 5.0 assists, and 3.0 steals per game on 45.2 percent shooting overall and 47.4 percent from three. Lillard's been the best player on the floor through the first two games of this series, and it hasn't been particularly close. But it's the ubiquitous aggression he's playing with that accounts for those numbers and the team's collective mindset more than anything else.
Lillard launched 11 threes in Game 1 and eight on Tuesday night, more than half of which have come from at least 28 feet. He's taken 16 shot attempts from the restricted area, more than any guard in the playoffs so far except for Russell Westbrook. Lillard opened Game 1 by dribbling into a 30-footer on Portland's first possession, and walked into another to give his team a two-possession lead in crunch time.
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The Blazers talked throughout the regular season about last year's humiliating loss to the Pelicans making them stronger, but knew all along the true test of that hard-earned mettle wouldn't come until the playoffs. Lillard has clearly put the onus on himself to ensure Portland passes it, exhibiting a spirit of unflinching confidence detractors will insist borders on arrogant, but is actually just a more outward manifestation of the belief he's always had in himself and his team.
The Blazers shrunk from the challenge put forth by New Orleans this time a year ago. Now, Lillard is leading a brash charge that put him at odds with both Westbrook and Steven Adams in Game 2 alone. The superstar point guards, fierce on-court rivals, got into it after fighting for the ball late in the second quarter, with Lillard ultimately giving Westbrook a light shove that nearly sparked a team-wide skirmish. Two quarters later, with the game's outcome already decided, Lillard shared a tense, stoic conversation with Adams about a bone-crushing screen levied by the Thunder big man on the previous possession that officials felt the need to interrupt.
He responded to the first incident by stripping Westbrook and creating a turnover, and to the second by stealing a pass from Paul George and going coast-to-coast, finishing with a tough off-hand layup between two defenders.
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Westbrook, meanwhile, has 38 points on 37 shots and 10 turnovers against the Blazers thus far. Though he got the better of Lillard one-on-one several times in Game 1, that wasn't the case for Game 2, when Lillard forced Westbrook into 3-of-12 shooting and two turnovers. Lillard also ripped Denis Schroder's dribble during one crucial sequence late in the third quarter on Tuesday night, then found Seth Curry for a three in transition. He closed out the quarter by scoring six points in its final 30 seconds, putting Portland up 91-75 entering the final stanza.
Two games don't make a series, of course. Every team in the NBA is better at home, and Chesapeake Energy Arena has long been one of the league's most hostile playoff environments. The Thunder could very well take both games in Oklahoma City, effectively making this series a best-of-three when it returns to Moda Center next week.
Regardless, don't expect the Blazers to lose lying down. Lillard, at the height of his physical powers and peak of his mental acuity, understands the Blazers still have work to do, and if these first two games are any indication, will refuse to let his team fall again without putting himself at the center of the fight.
“After our past two experiences, I'm like, ‘I'm happy about it, but I really don't care,'” he said of Portland's 2-0 lead. “I know how quickly things can change. I know that a series doesn't start until you win a game on the road, and I also know how capable their team is. We gotta maintain our focus, stay sharp in the things that we've been sharp in, and understand that how well we played in the first game and the second game is not gonna be good enough in the third game, especially on their home floor. We just gotta keep our heads down and keep workin'.”
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