Damian Lillard’s 71 points sets Blazers record in his latest masterpiece: ‘A piece of art’ – The Athletic

PORTLAND, Ore. — For years, people have been urging Damian Lillard to get into art. To study it, to know it, to buy it.

“I’ve seen pieces of art,” Lillard said. “And (sometimes) I’m looking at it at I don’t even know what the hell that is … (like) why is this an expensive piece of art?”

He has never been able to develop the eye for it, the taste for it, but on Sunday, the Trail Blazers star sure did know how to create it.

In a performance that coach Chauncey Billups called a “piece of art,” Lillard scored a franchise-record 71 points, which included a Blazers-record 13 3-pointers, to help Portland beat Houston 131-114.

“We don’t get the chance to experience things like this a lot,” said Billups, who had a storied 17-year NBA career. “I’ve been around the league a long, long time and 71… I mean, that was incredible, man.”

Much like art, there were many interpretations of why Lillard’s performance was so exceptional.

To Billups, it was the efficiency and the unselfishness. Lillard made 22-of-38 shots, all 14 of his free throws, and 13-of-22 from 3-point range. And after 39 minutes of absorbing double teams and traps, the point guard had six assists and only two turnovers.

“It really, really was a masterful performance,” Billups said. “A piece of art.”

To Lillard, the art was in the timing and what it meant for the team’s playoff chances. Portland (29-31) moved into 11th place in the West, one-half game behind New Orleans and Minnesota for the final two play-in berths, and three games behind Phoenix for the fourth seed and home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs. On Saturday, Lillard planted seeds throughout the team that its urgency needed to rise for the season’s final 23 games, and he was intent on showing the way. To him, backing up his talk underscored his underdog journey from lightly recruited high schooler to being named one of the NBA’s Top 75 greatest players of all time.

“For me, it’s the beauty in it for where we are as a team, for one,” Lillard said. “And for what I represent, what I put into the game, how I handle myself, how I handle success. Because of the history of me, and what I do, that’s the beauty of art like this.”

And to his teammates, it was the almost effortless manner in which he tied the NBA’s highest-scoring performance this season. Cam Reddish, who played in his fourth game with Lillard since being traded from New York, couldn’t help being awe-struck.

“I mean, his composure … he was never rah, rah, rah,” Reddish said. “It was just like it was normal. Almost casual, like he made it look easy.”

To the more than 19,000 in attendance, it was so moving and so unmistakable that something special was happening that a palpable tension started building in the first quarter.

“I sensed that (from the crowd) very early,” Billups said. “It just kept getting louder and louder every time he made a shot, and then it was even loud when he shot a shot and missed … the oooooooh … that was even loud. So I was like, ‘Man, this is going to be crazy tonight.”’

Funny enough, crazy is a word Lillard used to describe the night. There was a prescient conversation with general manager Joe Cronin before the national anthem. A harrowing drug test after the game. A record-setting tradition continued in the locker room. And such modest plans for a postgame celebration that even the most fuddy-duddy of dads would blush.

Sunday was the Blazers’ first home game since the All-Star break, so the team planned to honor Lillard before the national anthem for winning the 3-point shooting contest at All-Star weekend in Salt Lake City. As Lillard and Cronin waited on the sideline near the scorer’s table for their cue to walk to center court for a trophy presentation, they talked.

“(Cronin) looked around and said, ‘The crowd is crazy in here tonight,’” Lillard recalled. “And I turned to him and said, ‘That’s because they are expecting a run … like, they are expecting something.’ And that was our interaction … then we walked to half court.”

One of the Blazers’ trademarks in the Lillard era has been late-season surges after the All-Star break, usually led by emphatic play from the point guard. Perhaps it was that history, or perhaps it was knowing that Lillard the day before had started planting seeds of motivation throughout the roster about picking up the intensity and making a playoff push, but Lillard said he could sense an electricity in the building. He knew his sense was real after he hit his second 3-pointer in the first quarter.

“It just felt like something,” Lillard said. “I ran back, and it was a LOUD cheer, almost like the crowd was like, ‘Something is getting started,’” Lillard said.

They were right. One day after reminding his teammates of the need to raise the bar for the stretch run, Lillard stormed out of the gate with 16 first-quarter points, which included 3 of 5 from 3. It was the ultimate example of walking the talk.

“He just did what great players and leaders do,” Billups said. “Dame is not Top 75 for no reason … an honor like that, sometimes you have to poke your chest out and show it — not just talk about it — and that’s what he is all about.”

The timing for Lillard’s speech was intentional. One, it was his first game back after the break because Billups held him out of Thursday’s game at Sacramento as a precaution after the team had a stressful, weather-plagued trip. Also, the Rockets (13-47) have the NBA’s worst record, and Lillard wanted to make sure the Blazers’ heads were in the right space.

“We have to be unbreakable,” Lillard said. “That doesn’t mean it’s always going to go right, or it’s always going to be fun, but whatever happens we have to keep marching forward. We are going to be in some dogfights, we are going to be in some tough games. We can’t look at a game like tonight, like oh, we playing Houston, we supposed to win … no. We gotta go out there and back against the wall every night.”

Despite Lillard’s quick start, the Blazers led only 32-31 after the first quarter. And with Houston within eight nearing halftime, Lillard went into another gear, scoring 13 points in the final 2:27, which included 3-pointers on three consecutive possessions — the last one from 36 feet. By then, the crowd was standing every offensive possession, and when he finished the half off with a driving layup, he had 41 points — a career best for a half — and the Blazers led 73-58.

“Having 41 in the first half was insane,” Billups said.

Little did Billups realize, he would be even more impressed in the opening minutes of the second half. After all the points, and all the long bombs in the first half — Lillard hit four 3-pointers from 32 feet and beyond in the first half — Lillard came out in the second half and … passed. Houston started double teaming more aggressively, sending two defenders to greet Lillard at the half-court line, a tactic that backfired when Lillard continually hit open teammates on the Blazers’ first five possessions.

“He made every right play,” Billups said. “He wasn’t forcing at all.”

Lillard didn’t take his first shot of the second half until 8:42 left in the third. His second shot didn’t come until 7:22.

“That takes some incredible discipline,” Billups said.

Lillard passed to Matisse Thybulle for a dunk. Another pass led to a Thybulle 3-pointer. And Lillard threw a long lob pass to Shaedon Sharpe for a dunk.

“When a team presents that type of defense, accept it and embrace it and depend on teammates to take them out of that coverage,” Lillard said.

It was part of the artistry that Billups was referring to. When the Rockets were aggressive, Lillard drew fouls. When they respected his ability to drive, Lillard hit 3s. And when they trapped him, he made the right passes.

“I wasn’t like, ‘I’m gonna get 70 tonight,”’ Lillard said. “I was playing to keep the lead instead of playing to score a bunch of points.”

But the bunches of points came, with the most emphatic coming near the end, when his driving dunk while being fouled by Jabari Smith Jr., gave him 58 points, and the ensuing free throw 59 points. It was the full display of power, quickness and tenacity that has defined his 11-year career.

The dunk was so powerful, so quick and so aggressive that maybe Lillard shouldn’t have been so shocked about what was waiting for him after the game. Before he could celebrate, before he could shower, the NBA presented him with paperwork: He was being drug tested.

On Saturday afternoon, following practice and after he had planted the seed of urgency into his teammates, Lillard spoke to the media while drinking a bottle of water. In his sweatsuit pocket was another bottle of water, unopened. He wasn’t particularly thirsty, he was just trying to force liquids into his body. Saturday was drug-test day at the Blazers facility, and Lillard was one of the scheduled players due to give a urine sample.

With that test behind him, Lillard said he couldn’t believe it Sunday when he was told after the game he was again being tested — this time a blood test. Lillard said NBA players are given six drug tests a season — four urine and two blood draws. Considering he gave a urine sample on Saturday, he said he was stunned after the game when he was directed into the training room for a blood draw.

“I was like, are you serious?” Lillard said. “I did the urine test, then they backed that up with the blood draw tonight after the game. That was actually the first time being tested in my career after a game.”

To make the inconvenience worse, Lillard says he hates needles.

“They know I’m scared of needles … I know I have a lot of tattoos, but when you are doing a blood draw it’s different than tattoos,” Lillard said. “It brought me down from up here (places hand as far as he could reach above his head) to the floor.”

It wasn’t until after the drug test that he began to feel better and settle into his night. Truth be told, Lillard is uncomfortable with more than just needles. He says he doesn’t like situations where he is the center of attention, because he’s unsure of how to handle the adulation. But on Sunday, he allowed himself to continue what had become a celebratory tradition when he set a scoring mark — taking a picture holding the boxscore of his scoring achievement, with the number of the record in bold, black ink, a nod to Wilt Chamberlain’s famous photo when he scored 100 points in 1962. It was Lillard paying homage to a former employee, longtime Blazers communications vice president Jim Taylor, who commemorated each milestone scoring mark with a re-creation of the Chamberlain shot.

“When it’s happening in a game, I embrace it. I enjoy those moments in a game when I’m going after people and I’m in attack mode … but it’s the stuff afterward that I struggle with,” Lillard said. “Like, when I walked off the court, I was like, am I supposed to be overly excited or what? Those are the moments I struggle with. So when I walked in the locker room, I was like, ‘I don’t even want to hold this paper up; I already know people are expecting it. But I was like, usually when I have those types of games or got my career high in the past, Jim Taylor would always make me do it. So I was like, ‘Man, I’m going to do it for Jim Taylor.’ So I sat there and did it.

“So, I live for the moments when I’m taking over and dominating games, but I don’t live for the stuff that comes afterwards,” Lillard said.

Many, like Billups, can look at Sunday’s performance and identify the artistry. The effortless grace of Lillard’s 3-point stroke. The force of his fourth-quarter dunk. The improvisation amid a charging defense. But to Lillard, the art of basketball is found in the abstract.

“(Basketball) is art to me because there are so many things that go on within a team, within a game, within a season,” Lillard said. “There’s a million words for it, lots of ways to describe it, and a lot of things that go into it. There’s a lot of pain, lot of work … and everybody feels a different way about what is happening and what they see .. and I would say that is art. It has different meaning to everybody.”

To Lillard, his art is his journey. As a youth, he learned to shoot in his grandmothers’ yard in Oakland, Calif., where there was an oak tree. One of the branches grew into the shape of a hoop. When the tree was taken down by the city when he was in 5th grade, his grandfather nailed milk crates to the telephone pole on Clara Street to form a makeshift hoop. The most rudimentary materials produced one of the game’s most prolific and picturesque shooters.

He was never highly regarded as a youth, and as a sophomore in high school he was benched. He was a two-star recruit with few options, and packed his bags for Ogden, Utah to attend Weber State, where he missed a season with a broken foot. The most unheralded of backstories turned into the most celebrated player in Blazers’ history.

“I think there’s a lot of power in my story, just my entire life,” Lillard said. “I think it’s a story that has been told so many times, and people know how much I embrace my story and being an underdog. But I think the big takeaway for me, is the most fun I’ve had and the thing I get the most emotional about is the journey.

“Like, I love telling my draft story and my last two years at Weber and everything I’ve been through because it was real. Those are the moments that make you.”

And also, the moments that make art.

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(Photo of Damian Lillard: Alika Jenner / Getty Images)

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