Damian Lillard's emergence in these recent NBA bubble games has brought forth some deserving praise. But it wouldn't be the real NBA without the overreacting to follow, dashed with some major Stephen Curry disrespect from ESPN's Max Kellerman and some others in the media and around the NBA Twitterverse.

On Wednesday, the pundit argued Lillard is “like Steph Curry,” but one “who gets better in the biggest moments” — a downright ignorant take that should have been his last take:

“Since the advent of the bubble, Damian Lillard is the best basketball player in the world,” said Kellerman during Wednesday's iteration of “First Take.” “Forget about the numbers for a second because he's putting up ridiculous numbers. Look at the moments in the game at which he's coming up biggest.

“Steph Curry, I believe, has turned over the years into a clutch player, a ‘money-on-the-line-in-the-Finals-type player.' But he hasn't always been that way. A lot of times Steph did not play his best in The Finals. And we don't know, let's see how deep Damian Lillard gets into the playoffs. He could still have bad games. But Damian Lillard is like Steph Curry, but a Steph Curry who gets better in the biggest moments. That's an unstoppable force.”

Oh, how quickly they forget …

We're only a little more than a year removed from the Portland Trail Blazers being swept out of the Western Conference Finals by a Golden State Warriors team without Kevin Durant and facing the crypt of their veteran role players.

One could argue the matchup was even, with two teams needing their respective backcourt to step up to come up big. These are the side-by-side stats:

2019 WCF Stephen Curry: 36.5 points, 8.3 rebounds, 7.3 assists, 47.1% from the floor, 42.5% from deep on 15.3 attempts per game.

2019 WCF Damian Lillard: 22.3 points, 4.8 rebounds, 8.5 assists, 36.1% from the floor, 37.1% from deep on 9.5 attempts per game.

Once again, it has been exactly 15 months since Curry and the Warriors trounced the Blazers in four games by an average of 9.5 points.

But the NBA has been without Stephen Curry for the bulk of the 2019-20 season, and the need to elevate other point guards to that elite hierarchy has never been higher.

Damian Lillard is without a doubt an elite point guard, but he doesn't have to eclipse Curry to be among the greats. This concept is rather foreign to TV talking heads, who must rearrange the rankings just because a player is going through a strong stretch.

Let's compare apples to apples here. Lillard is undoubtedly coming off his best season in 2019-20, so we'll put him up against Curry's unanimous 2015-16 MVP season:

2019-20 Damian Lillard: 30.0 points, 4.3 rebounds, 8.0 assists, 1.1 steals, 2.9 turnovers per game — 46.3% from the floor, 40.1% from 3, 88.8% from the foul line.

2015-16 Stephen Curry: 30.1 points, 5.4 rebounds, 6.7 assists, 2.1 steals, 3.3 turnovers per game — 50.4% from the floor, 45.4% from 3, 90.8% from the foul line.

Something else gets lost in the numbers: Curry put up these numbers in fewer minutes per game while leading the Warriors to a 73-9 record, the best the league has seen in the regular season. He was teeing up 11.2 3-pointers per game that season while Lillard just recently got his double-digit license this campaign, averaging 10.2 attempts per game.

For kicks, here are Curry's playoff lows compared to Lillard's playoff highs since 2015:

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Now, let's talk clutch.

The perception that Curry is not a clutch player has been slanderous, to say the least — a narrative that has carried on way out of control. While Curry has had some poor outings in the playoffs, and getting stoned by Kevin Love in Game 7 of the 2016 NBA Finals will always haunt him, his overall numbers show he's truly a shotmaker when the game is on the line.

A quick look at this chart shows that Curry leads four out of five categories by a mile, and is second in 2-pointers as well. The only reason why James Harden leads that category by 25 percentage points? The Rockets don't take shots outside of the paint unless they're beyond the arc, hence his uber-high efficiency:

Here's some visual proof, starting with Curry putting up 33 second-half points after being held scoreless in the first half of what would be a game-clinching Game 6 against the Rockets in the Western Conference Semifinals:

If halftime bounce-back performances are not your cup of tea, how about a near-triple-double overtime performance against Lillard's own Blazers. He put up 40 points and for good measure, Stephen Curry holds the record for most points in an overtime period — bagging 17 after returning from an ankle injury:

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Let's not forget about how Curry made his legend during the 2014-15 postseason. Down five with only 17.4 seconds left in Game 3 of a first-round series against the New Orleans Pelicans, Curry hit a triple to cut it to two. After the Pelicans split free throws, he nailed a game-tying trey with 2.8 seconds left to send it to overtime.

This is the closest the Pelicans got to smelling a win, getting effectively swept out of contention. Just a killer shot:

How about clutch in The Finals? Been there, done that.

Clips of this sauce on Matthew Dellavedova have been played endless times. Curry tallied 37 points in Game 5 of the 2015 NBA Finals, a performance that would put him one win away from his first title:

https://youtu.be/si5phRZBlD4?t=183

This is no disrespect toward Damian Lillard, who's an elite player in his own right. But using his rise into the elite to catapult him over a player who has proved clutch at every stage of his career is flat-out slanderous, ignorant, and a cheap excuse to make headlines.

It won't be long before Stephen Curry reminds guys like Max Kellerman and the rest of the NBA about how clutch he really is and what a special talent he has been throughout the years.

Let Dame be great, but also let Steph be great. There's enough area for these two great point guards to coexist among the elite without the need for one to bump the other out of contention.

Curry just had a tremendous run of five straight years reaching the NBA Finals, one that coincided with LeBron James' run of eight straight Finals appearances. Let's enjoy Lillard's greatness for what it is without diminishing or slandering one of the all-time clutch players by being a prisoner of the moment.