Five years. One hundred twenty million dollars. Those are the reported terms of the max contract extension Portland Trail Blazers point guard Damian Lillard signed this summer, extending the control the Blazers have over him to six years in all.
The reason the number, $120 million, was so large is because Lillard’s extension will kick in next summer, when the NBA’s salary cap will take an expected jump into the $90 million range, thanks to the terms of a massive TV deal the league brokered with Disney (which owns ESPN and ABC) and Turner (which owns TNT). Under the terms of the current collective bargaining agreement, players and team owners split the revenue the league generates, including from that TV deal, almost evenly.
Lillard’s deal is based on a percentage of the cap, not a hard number limit. Unless he goes totally bonkers next year and forces his way to a starting spot in the All-Star Game, or makes another All-NBA Team, Lillard’s percentage is going to be 25%. If he hits one of the benchmarks I mentioned, he qualifies for the Derrick Rose Rule super-max percentage of 35%, but since his team this year lost much of its prestige and talent, he likely won’t get there. He’d have to lead the league in scoring, assists or Player Efficiency Rating to stand a chance of hitting a super-max benchmark.
Anthony Davis, the other 2012 high draft pick to sign a monster extension this offseason, has a contract that is reported as five years and $145 million, the richest in NBA history. His super-max contract, barring catastrophic injury, is all but assured, since he already is among the five best players in the NBA today. Lillard, while very good, is barely in the top 25.
So why is Damian Lillard getting paid almost the same amount as a once-in-a-generation talent like Davis?
Lillard’s Strengths
For one, Lillard is an incredibly productive perimeter shooter. Of his 1696 made field goals through his three-year career, 599 have been three-pointers. He’s made more threes through the first three years of his career than anybody in league history–and that includes both of the Splash Brothers of Golden State, Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson.
He can hit threes from anywhere within 35 feet of the basket, and completely lacks conscience. His off-the-dribble ability in particular is impressive. He can hit a three immediately after picking up his dribble or pulling up on a pick-and-roll play, a necessary ability to have in today’s NBA. He’s also got a reputation as a crunch-time killer; he’s not afraid of the big shot or the big moment.
If Curry is the ideal modern NBA point guard, both Lillard and Cleveland’s Kyrie Irving are incomplete versions of that ideal. Curry is among the best shooters of all time, with killer handles and a passing acumen rivaled only by LeBron James and Chris Paul. Lillard has the shot, and Irving has the handles, but both still can’t begin to approach the greatness of Curry, yet.
And about Curry’s defense: make no mistake, he still kind of stinks on that end. The Warriors’ defense, though, plays four or five like-sized players capable of switching pick-and-rolls and assignments on the fly, ensuring Curry is never put in a spot where he could be exposed. Neither Lillard nor Irving have that security blanket, so their own craptastic defense gets taken advantage of.
Lillard is the kind of building block worth securing through his 20s because of his offensive skill. He’s a better passer than he’s given credit for (certainly better than Irving, who often had games with three or less assists; LeBron even had to call him out after Irving had zero assists in a game), and the attention he receives can be taken advantage of by the young players the Blazers will now have to give big minutes to.
The last reason why Lillard is worth $120 million should resonate strongly with longtime followers of the Trail Blazers: his durability. Lillard has played every game during the last three seasons, and each of the 16 postseason games Portland was involved in as well.
Given the Blazers’ checkered history with fragile players, and with injuries in total (would the Blazers of 2014 have broken up if Wesley Matthews hadn’t ruptured his Achilles tendon? Probably not), having a guy like Lillard who’s not only a star player, but extremely durable, is a good sign for the future.
Even though the contract is very large, Lillard is a player with a body built out of oak, a heart of ice, and balls of solid rock. What’s not to like?
Lillard’s Weaknesses
Well, what’s not to like is the defense he plays. I’ve said time and again that defending point guards in the NBA is the toughest thing for a young player, of any position, to do. Lillard wasn’t really helped by the conservative scheme coach Terry Stotts put in after the team traded for Robin Lopez; Lopez is too slow to chase point guards and couldn‘t really help poor Dame as he was left on an island.
Guards who could hit a 12-foot floater, like San Antonio’s Tony Parker or Curry, or good mid-range shooters like Memphis’ Beno Udrih (who Portland saw in the first round in the last postseason), just murdered the Blazers because Lopez was too deep in the paint to challenge the shot, and Lillard was smashed like a bug on a windshield by the screener. Having more mobile bigs, like Mason Plumlee and Noah Vonleh, around should help once they figure out NBA defense, but Lillard needs to help out as well.
Learning to slough off those picks and keep pace with his counterpart handling the ball would go a long way towards shooting down his reputation as one of the worst on-ball defenders in the NBA.
That field-goal shooting is merely average, at around 43% for his career (and 37% from three), but since he’s going to be the complete focus of all five guys on defense at all times next year, I don’t expect that to improve. Again, like Irving, he needs talent around him in order to be efficient.
The biggest thing going against Lillard was the same thing dogging Irving before LeBron James and Kevin Love came to his team: neither one of those guys is suited to being THE MAN. Lillard’s amazing 2014 postseason heroics led people to declare that he was better than Irving, and then Irving’s 2014 World Cup MVP performance, coupled with a deep postseason run alongside LeBron, made people say Irving was definitely better than Lillard. The truth is, other than a couple of differences in skill set, they’re basically the same player.
For the Blazers to be successful in the future, they need somebody better than Lillard on the team. I doubt Lillard’s massive contract will be a limiting factor, not with the state the team is currently in (all of the rookie contracts and cheap veterans!), but that guy is currently not on the roster, no matter how much Vonleh and Meyers Leonard improve.
Being bad enough to secure a high draft pick is now the priority for Neil Olshey, the Blazers GM. With all the young guys on the team, they will take a heaping pile of lumps from Thanksgiving to Easter. In the Eastern Conference, this could be a 30-35 win team, but in the West, with so many great, good, or improving teams, Portland could challenge the abysmal 21-61 mark set in 2005-06, which is tied for second-worst in franchise history with the 1972-73 team.
(The worst, in case you’re curious, is the 1971-72 team, at 18-64. That was the Blazers’ second year in existence, so that’s understandable.)
The last time the Blazers were that bad, a couple dudes named Brandon Roy and LaMarcus Aldridge were drafted the ensuing summer. Here’s hoping Portland can find similar luck in the 2016 Draft, and that guy has the potential to be better than Lillard. For a franchise that’s only lost 60 or more games three times in its 45-year history, that kind of losing could be hard to stomach, but it might be necessary for the Blazers to get the kind of talent that can vault them to the top.
To sum up, Lillard is worth a max contract. No, he won’t mean the difference between bottom-feeding and respectability all by himself, but don’t blame him for that; the guys who have that kind of talent can literally be counted on one hand. Hell, even Steph Curry, the best player on a championship team, needs a great, great team to both accentuate his strengths and cover up his weaknesses.
Damian Lillard is the perfect supplemental star. The next step for the Portland Trail Blazers is finding the exceptional player that Lillard can supplement.
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