To aid me on this front, I used the Game Score metric found on Basketball-Reference, which is a quick calculation to determine how well a player performed in a single game. I used it as a baseline to find some games that Lillard struggled in, before finally settling on the Blazers’ March 19th game against the Milwaukie Bucks (a 102-95 loss). Basketball-Reference ranked it as his eighth worst game of the season.
Even without fancy metrics and their ilk, a look at the box score clearly indicated that it was a bit of a struggle for Lillard – 2/10, 0/4 on threes, three rebounds, six turnovers, eight points, but 11 assists. I was originally trying to find a game without such gaudy assist numbers, but then I decided it would be nice to see one aspect of his game working when the others obviously weren’t.
So, I dived right in and watched every minute that Lillard played, focusing only on him. Here are my observations:
The game was the second of a back-to-back, both on the road, and Lillard’s 67th of the season. This is all to say that Lillard looked tired, and I can understand why. This goes a long way towards explaining the meager 10 shot attempts – he didn’t look to create for himself often at all. In fact, I could count on one hand how many times he tried to drive to the hoop.
But, by not looking to create for himself, he could expend his energy on finding his teammates, to the tune of 11 assists (tied for his second most of the season). Let me tell you, though, that if his teammates didn’t brick wide open jumper after wide open jumper or fumble the ball away, that total could have been 20. Easily.
