An injury may help explain Damian Lillard‘s shooting woes in the Western Conference Finals, tweets Shams Charania of The Athletic. The Trail Blazers star has been playing through the pain of separated ribs.
The injury appeared to happen in Thursday’s Game 2 when Warriors center Kevon Looney landed on Lillard during a battle for a loose ball.
Although Lillard is averaging 20.3 points and 7.3 assists in the series, has shot just 32.6%, including a 5 for 18 performance Saturday. He is also committing 4.7 turnovers per night in the three games against Golden State.
A source confirmed Lillard’s injury to ESPN’s Tim MacMahon (Twitter link), but stopped short of blaming it for his sub-par performance, saying, “Not a story, he always plays through injuries.”
Lillard’s condition is one more concern for the Trail Blazers as they face the near-impossible task of trying to overcome a 3-0 deficit against the defending champions.
I mean he wasn’t playing well in game one and up to that point either. It’s impressive the Blazers made it this far through OKC and the #2 team in the Nuggets but they are way overmatched here.
Yes the disappointment—kind of expected perhaps—is that the WCF would be lopsided.
Warriors knock out Kwahi with Zaza and now Lillard with Looney. Did someone on their team knock out Chris Paul last year too or was that just normal wear and tear?
Don’t get me wrong they are a great team and have there own injuries but A.) do we see a pattern and B.) are their titles tainted by the fact that some of their toughest opponents have major injuries.
Lmao yeah they also took out Boogie, KD, and Iguadola because they wanted to make it interesting
@brewpack your accusation of intent on Looney is absolutely ridiculous. Watch the tape; his eyes were on the ball. If it was your guy you’d applaud the effort to steal and pick up the 50-50.
Injuries happen, especially in scrums for the ball. Do you hear any conspiracy theories coming from the warriors about DMC quad earlier in this playoffs, Klay’s ankle and finger, Curry’s ankles, knee and finger, Iguodala’s lower leg, Durant’s calf?
So you do not deny intent by Zaza? Comments?
I had a legitimate question about Paul. I don’t remember.
I saw Looney play as a teenager and I want nothing but the best for him but he still landed on a guy and NO foul was called. He landed on the guy with enough force to break ribs and no foul at a critical point in the game. Even if it was not as blatant as Bill Laimbeer I could see it being potentially flagrant.
How many of those injurys were opponent aided? Not KD!
I am throwing out ideas for fun. Just a post!
looking at it again, Lillard may have “dove under” Looney.
Well damn, if they knew that, why didn’t they give Hood and Curry more minutes?? Oh i forgot it’s better to just throw away the season because your star player is playing through injury instead of leaning on your bench like you did when the last two stars went down. It’s annoying af to lose to a Warriors team that isn’t even good enough to beat the Bucks next round when you had the lead in all 3 games. Trash way to end the season, this is WAY more disappointing than getting swept by the Pelicans last year.
That being said I also wouldn’t be surprised if they come back and win in 7 lol. It’s just so uncharacteristic of this team to go out like that after this season. If any team can do it it’d be this team.
Let me see right here that Damian Lillard has got to be the most straight-up guy in the entire league. He’s an mvp-type, all League player with such heart and grit. Love him.
Of course he would never tell anyone he was hurt but imagine separated ribs it’s even hard to breathe with that kind of injury.
Man people didn’t let curry by with the knees in 2016. If you’re on the court, you’re good to play.
Neither Lillard or Mccollum look right.
The Blazers got a big lead by playing two out of a crew of three tall skinny white guys, here in this age of small lineups, and I was liking it. I thought I would be coming on here to take back my criticims of Zach Collins and how the indulgent FO refused to improve the team by trading him.
But they all kind of died, heads lowering, in the second half while Draymond was rampant. So I was right. Indeed the Blazers are lucky the Cavs gave them Rodney. This will be the third year in a row they bow out with a sweep.