“Why is Paul George labelled a Playoff choker is he shoots better than Damian Lillard in the Playoffs?” Interesting NBA stat shows that the Clippers superstar trumps the Blazers MVP in a certain aspect

Paul George, over his career, has a better true shooting percentage in the Playoffs than Damian Lillard, someone who is labelled as being ‘clutch’. 

Paul George has had an interesting career so far in the 10 years that he’s been in the league. He has been to the Conference Finals in both the East and the West while being the man on both of these teams, that are the Pacers and the Clippers, respectively. However, bringing it in every single Playoff game hasn’t really been his forte. 

Damian Lillard has had a relatively similar level of success to Paul George when it comes to the postseason, in terms of never making it to the NBA Finals. Lillard has led the Blazers to a WCF appearance but were swiftly swept by a KD-less Warriors squad. Not to mention his horrific series against the Pelicans in 2018.

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Putting PG13’s and Dame’s Playoff highs and lows side by side, there isn’t all too much difference really. Unfortunately for the former, the public sentiment lies heavily on Dame’s side when it comes to who has been more successful. 

Paul George has a higher true shooting percentage in the Playoffs than Damian Lillard. 

Now, true shooting percentage is no definitive measure of success in neither the regular or postseason as it just shows how efficient a player is at shooting the ball. The formula for this statistic goes to the tune of: (pointsx100)/ 2x (field goals attempted +(0.44xfree throws attempted)). 

It’s seen that Paul George has a higher TS% in the Playoffs than Damian Lillard by a single decimal place. PG sits at 56.2% while Dame is at 56.1%. As mentioned before, these percentages do not give anybody an accurate measure over whether George is definitively more successful than Lillard in the Playoffs.

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It does however, give NBA fans an insight into false narratives that plague players for years due to a single Playoff series. That 2019 OKC-Blazers series did wonders for Damian Lillard as it erased his mistakes from the year prior while PG was labelled as the ‘guy that had a 37-foot game winner hit on him’. 

Paul George’s 2020 WCSF against the Denver Nuggets didn’t help his case either as he folded with the Clippers having a 3-1 lead over them. Kawi’s injury in 2021 did allow the former Pacer to be the de facto number one option yet again and more or less, he delivered in the WCF.