Damian Lillard recently had one of the greatest scoring performances in NBA history as he dropped 71 points against the Houston Rockets in a blow-out win. He joined Donovan Mitchell as the only player since Kobe Bryant in 2006 to cross the 70+ point threshold.
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In this game, Dame dropped 13 shots from the beyond the arc but didn’t cross 20 shot attempts from 3-point land. During an interview with JJ Redick on the ‘Old Man and the Three’ podcast, he would go on to say that he felt as though he could’ve had 90 points so many of his shots rimmed out and should’ve gone in.
He would also claim during this same interview that someone like himself, Stephen Curry, or Luka Doncic could realistically drop 100 points in a game. As everybody knows, the only man to do so was Wilt Chamberlain against the New York Knicks.
Shaquille O’Neal on Damian Lillard needing to shoot more
The Portland Trailblazers aren’t playing well as of late. In a final push to perhaps make the 10th seed to sneak into the play-in, they’ve instead gone the other way and lost 8 of their last 10 games. It’s clear that they have little to no chance at making the postseason now and so resting Damian Lillard might be what’s next for the team.
However, Shaquille O’Neal feels as though the Blazers should try something out before resting Dame. As games now simply don’t matter for Portland unless they were to win every single game going forward, why not let the Top 75 talent shoot 100 3s.
This would mean that if he drained 15 3s out of those 100, he would break the all-time 3s made in a regular season record. If he were to make 34 out of the 100, he would break Wilt’s record for most points in a game with 102.
How often would Damian Lillard have to shoot for this to work?
The 3-point shot is the greatest weapon available for any player in this day and age to break Wilt’s record. So, if Dame were to commit to this, he would exclusively have to shoot 3s to not ‘waste’ any given options.
With each game being 48 minutes long, he would have to shoot about twice every minute to be able to reach that hundred 3-point attempt mark. This also means that the Blazers would need 100 offensive possessions. Only thing is that the average number of possessions per game in 2022-23 is 99.3.
Essentially, Damian Lillard would have to shoot on every single possession he gets and all 4 other players would simply be decoys. Though, as NBA defenses are, they would catch onto what was happening pretty quick and double-triple team him, forcing him to pass the ball. Safe to say that this tactic would never work if scoring 100 points is the goal.
Also read: “I Should Have Had 90”: Damian Lillard Makes Bold Claim About Wilt Chamberlain’s Record
