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January was not particularly favorable for the Portland Trail Blazers. Going into Wednesday’s game against the Utah Jazz, they posted his 4-8 record for the month, and when they trailed Utah by 12 in the first half, they recovered his ninth loss. looked like he was about to slip back to No. 13 in the Western Conference. And then, well, Damien Lillard happened.
Lillard’s individual scoring is all that made the Blazers successful in January. He averaged 35.6 points over the past nine games Wednesday, and his points-per-game average this season is his 29.3 points, well within his career-high 30 points. But all of that pales in comparison to his play Wednesday against Utah.
final line? His staggering 60 points on 21-of-29 shooting percentage makes him only the fourth player in NBA history to hit 70, after Wilt his Chamberlain (4), David his Thompson and Karl his Malone. Here is the player who scored his 60th in percent shooting percentage. It was his third 60-point performance of the season, and was as impressive as Donovan Mitchell’s 71 points and Luka Doncic’s 60-point triple-double in a one-man comeback against the New York Knicks. Between the 6:42 mark in the third quarter and the 11:10 mark in the fourth, Lillard was the only Blazer to score. Fortunately for Portland, he scored his 20th consecutive points in that stretch.
In the game, Lillard was a little shy of scoring half of Portland’s 124 point total. He made more than half of the Blazers’ 3-pointers, sank nine of his 17 successful shots as a team, hit 60% of his team’s free throws, and made 15 of them. Of those, he succeeded nine times. His goals in his 21 field were more than Portland’s remaining starting lineup combined (18).
The fourth 60-point game of Lillard’s career tied him with Michael Jordan and James Harden. They are only behind Kobe Bryant’s 6 and Wilt Chamberlain’s 32. Given his recent NBA scoring exploits, it’s hard to imagine that this will be the last time he achieves the feat.
It was one of the great individual performances of the season, and as Portland’s history shows, it took virtually every point to pull off a 134-124 win.After all, it was only two weeks ago portland lost Lillard’s 50-point performance against Cleveland was the third 50-point loss in Lillard’s career. Five days later, they wasted his 44-point gem against Denver.
The Blazers still have the 22nd-best defense in the NBA, and every time Lillard goes to the bench, the offense drops about 13 points per 100 possessions. If Lillard needs to score 60 to survive January’s brawl with the Jazz, this team will likely have considerable difficulty moving forward.
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