NBA All Star 2025: Why Damian Lillard could be the King of the Triple
While Damian Lillard seeks his third consecutive title in triple competition, AM850 analyzes what makes the nine-time all-stand so dangerous from the depth.
Twenty -five years ago, The last time the NBA stars game In the Bay area, Damian Lillardnine years old, he was there. Tiring triples, of course.
With the festivities of the improvisation session of one week that were held in the city, Lillard’s father, Houston, allowed him to stay at home without going to school during the week. Among those activities: a 3 -point competition for local fans, during which he and his older brother, Houston Jr., reached the championship round.
“It is definitely a complete circle,” Lillard said, nine times there of the Milwaukee Bucks and Oakland native, California, on having the event in the Bay area again. “It was a great week. Many memories. Vince Carter won that voyage contest. Many of my favorite players I grew up seeing played in that game of stars.”
Now, a quarter of a century later, Lillard is competing to win the NBA triple contest award for the third consecutive year, something that only two players (Larry Bird and Craig Hodges) have achieved.
A third consecutive victory in the event, in the middle of a revolution of the triples, will confirm a point that is overlooked due to another icon of the Bay area: despite all the deserved attention that the escort of the Golden State Warriors, Stephen Currylike the best shooter of all time, there are arguments to affirm that Lillard has been the king of the deep triple of the NBA for several years.
The scenario of the western finals 2019 He was ready for a confrontation between the two best handle bases of the league.
The confrontation was not up to the expectations, since the Golden State Warriors of Curry swept the Portland Trail Blazers of Lillard to reach the NBA finals. Curry undoubtedly surpassed Lillard, surpassing the then Blazers star with 36.5 points per game compared to 22.3 points with much better efficiency.
But among the long shadow created by the historic postseason success of Curry and the great volume of its three -point shots, there is the perception that it is in its own stratosphere in regards to its long distance efficiency. And that is not exactly true.
Yes, Curry has more triple than any player and a 140 -seasons NBA record with at least 150 triples scored. But the 12 seasons of Lillard with that total place it in second place of all time. And when zoom is made, sometimes about half of the court, such as its nickname Lillard Lillard would suggest, Lillard’s numbers seem more favorable from farther distances compared to those of Curry and other counterparts.
During the last 10 seasons, Lillard has been the most accurate volume shooter of the league from more than 30 feet, connecting 31.9% of its attempts, according to Second Spectrum follow -up. He has led 240 since that distance compared to the 179 of Curry. The Golden State star has won 27.1% from there during the last 10 seasons. (Bring Young, all-star of the Atlanta Hawks, has scored the largest amount of 30-foot shots in the last decade, but has also taken many more than any other player. And its connection rate, with 30.6 %, is a little below Lillard’s in that window).
Despite his reputation, there are still many occasions, such as Sunday against Philadelphia 76ers, in which Lillard seems to take defenses by surprise with how far he is willing to launch.
He had just finished a third dominant quarter, in which he scored 15 points with four triples. But in the first play in the room, the field manager was standing on the edge of the Bucks mid -court logo, so far that the escort of the 76ers Tyrese Maxey left him neglected, believing that Lillard would not dare to throw a shot a shot thence.
Maxey was wrong. Lillard momentarily thought of throwing the ball, but then realized how open he was, even if he was at a whopping 32 feet of the hoop. He square his shoulders, raised the heels of the central court logo and let him fly from Oshkosh. Maxey tried to close, but it was too late.
The performance (43 points, the greatest amount of the season, with eight triples without the injured superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo) looked a lot like the dominant version of Portland de Lillard, which once scored 71 in a game. Milwaukee will desperately need the offensive space and production that creates the shooting in Lillard’s jump when the time of the playoffs arrives to have any possibility of replicating its success in the 2021 championship.
The two most important shots Of the legendary Lillard race, against the Houston Rockets in the 2014 playoffs and against the Oklahoma City Thunder in the postseason of 2019, they were not only game winners, but series winners. In fact, when he packed the iconic 37 -foot shot on the then OKC Paul George striker, Lillard said goodbye to Oklahoma City players as he fired them for the low season.
Those triples were possible thanks to a unique shot that Lillard has perfected. The most remarkable thing about jumping in the base: supports the ball completely on the palm of the hand (this makes the ball briefly lose all contact with the fingertips) before shaking it and throwing it with the right hand.
Interestingly, I used to use only the palm of the hand, without any contact between the fingertips and the ball. And when that was the case, I did not have a real rotation in its attempts to shoot.
“When I was 10 years old, my father used to scold me and tell me: ‘You have to throw with the fingertips! You are pulling with the knuckles!'” Lillard said in the podcast “The Old Man and the Three” Redick
“He is the only other person I have seen threw like this. He was very uncomfortable, but he did it worse than me; literally, he simply hit the ball.”
As a half measure, Lillard modified his way of launching a bit, until he reached what is now: the shot in Salto, which competes for his third consecutive title in the triple contest.
“He simply rolled (with his fingers),” Lillard said, seven times selected to the All-NBA team and won the MVP honors of the game of the stars last season. “And once you get a certain amount of repetitions, (already) you don’t even feel it.”
Despite how unusual your shot can be, there is an incredible amount of consistency in Lillard’s triple attempts over the years. An indication of that: the duration of its triple attempts has remained stable for five consecutive seasons, according to Second Spectrum. In 2020-21, 2021-22 and 2022-23, Lillard took 0.38 seconds on average to throw their shots from the arch. During the last year and a half, that figure has been practically the same: 0.37 seconds.
This level of consistency year after year undoubtedly gives an advantage in something like the triple contest, where to have the same form of a shot to the next acquires more importance. And if he wins in San Francisco for the third time, they are not surprised: he provided the model in the area of the bay 25 years ago, a form of shooting that evolved until it became one of the most productive in the history of the League.
“I really grew up in Oakland’s real part. I’m from the neighborhood, so I took the bus with these people every day. I was in the park with these people,” Lillard said. “So going home at 34 and that all these people really know me, I think that makes me wait a little longer because they really know that I took the most of the mud.”
Jamal Collier de AM850 and Matt Williams of AM850 Research contributed to this story.
