Fans serenade Damian Lillard with ‘M-V-P’ chants, for good reason
Hey, Portland Trail Blazers fans: tell us how you really feel about the way Damian Lillard’s playing right now.
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In context, it was pretty hard to argue with the Moda Center faithful showering their 25-year-old point guard with “M-V-P” chants late in Tuesday’s game against the Brooklyn Nets, considering he’d just flick-of-the-wrist-ed in a 65-footer (that, alas, didn’t count) before heading to the charity stripe:
… and because, frankly, Lillard is playing like an MVP candidate these days.
He added another monster evening to his resume on Tuesday, pouring in an efficient 34 points — 9-for-18 shooting, 14-for-14 from the foul line, not faltering on his free throws even as the chants rained down — with four assists, three steals and two rebounds as the Blazers knocked off Brooklyn, 112-104.
The Blazers have won six straight games, the longest winning streak in the NBA, and 11 of their last 12 to improve to 30-27 on the season, which puts them in seventh place in the Western Conference and just three games south of the fifth-place Memphis Grizzlies, who will be without star center and interior linchpin Marc Gasol for the remainder of the season. Lillard’s been stellar hit a huge late-game triple to put the Nets away.
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Portland has also continued to get positive complementary contributions from the likes of Mason Plumlee, Al-Farouq Aminu, Allen Crabbe and Maurice Harkless, a group of young players expected by many to struggle to replace the production of the gang of veterans the Blazers lost this summer — All-Star LaMarcus Aldridge, Swiss Army knife Nicolas Batum, heart-and-soul Wesley Matthews and forever overlooked dirty worker Robin Lopez — but that has instead, as young players sometimes do, grown in leaps and bounds after taking early-season lumps by determinedly working through the valleys in pursuit of loftier peaks ahead. Credit’s owed to general manager Neil Olshey for seeing present-day contributors where many only saw needs-development signings/trade targets, and to Stotts for finding the right strategic and rotational solutions to keep Portland among the league’s half-dozen or so best offensive teams even without former scoring centerpiece Aldridge.
But while many have helped propel Portland into playoff position, Lillard inarguably leads the pack, with his recent “man on fire” act adding flash and panache to his preexisting combination of high-volume shooting accuracy, daring playmaking, unerring confidence and tone-setting leadership that has made the Blazers the NBA’s hottest team, and made Blazers fans more fully appreciate the gifts of the franchise player who stuck around. They let him hear just how much they appreciate him in the closing seconds on Tuesday, and he heard them loud and clear, according to Casey Holdahl of the Blazers’ website:
“It meant a lot,” said Lillard […] “When I got up to the free throw line I heard it was growing a little bit, then I made the first one and it got loud. I could see all the fans like standing up and stuff, so that let me know that they really meant that chant. It was a great feeling and I’ve just got to keep doing what I’m doing.” […]
“I said it a month and a half ago: my focus is to pour myself into the team,” said Lillard. “The reason why they were chanting that is because I poured myself into the team and we’ve gotten better and we’re winning games and I’m playing well through that. I’ll just continue to do what I do and I’ll let everyone else make (MVP voting) decisions like they have been and they always will.”
Projected by many to be lucky to finish this season with 30 wins, Portland’s already got 30 in late February and has a 91 percent chance of returning the postseason, according to FiveThirtyEight, thanks largely to its point guard’s refusal to concede the point that he’s not good enough to lead this team there. It’s unlikely to vault him past Stephen Curry, Kawhi Leonard, Kevin Durant, LeBron James, Russell Westbrook and the other league-leading lights to the top of the heap in year-end balloting, but right here, right now, if what Dame’s doing isn’t worth an “M-V-P” chant, then man, what is?
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
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