CHICAGO, ILLINOIS – JANUARY 30: Damian Lillard #0 of the Portland Trail Blazers (facing camera) is mobbed by teammates after hitting the game-winning three point shot against the Chicago Bulls at the United Center on January 30, 2021 in Chicago, Illinois. The Trailblazers defeated the Bulls 123-122. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by downloading and or using this photograph, User is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement. (Photo by Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images)
Actual conversation about Damian Lillard that didn’t happen in my home: “Mom, when’s Dame Time?” “Shut up, son. I’m trying to watch the game.”
I like clocks for various reasons. I like that the number 60 is divisible by 3, 4 and 5. I like the way that they go in a circle so that if you want to roll them across the floor through an obstacle course, they almost cooperate.
I really like when every once in a while, Damian Lillard’s face shows up where there 12 is supposed to be, and things like this happen:
Damian Lillard does it again
I have to imagine it’s really difficult to be really good at something all the time. Luckily, there is a reprieve between games. I think Dame Time needs a gestation period. I’m not certain. It seems as wild as it did the first time I saw him do something incredible then tap his wrist to signify an invisible watch.
And somehow there’s still a strange sense of inevitability that happens when Lillard gets the ball in his hands at the end of the game with finality on the line. It’s gonna go in for the Portland Trail Blazers.
Sure, maybe it won’t, but he’s nestled into my mind’s comfy attic of clutch performers. Heat rises and all. It just feels different when a stilted play with seconds left ends with the ball in Lillard’s hands. Less “okay, here we go” and more “okay, here we go again.”
There’s an element of being in the right place at the right moment, but Robert Covington just swatting at the ball to get it in Damian Lillard’s hands is all the indication needed of something inevitable. “Not me. Him.” Lillard had maybe a quarter of a controlled dribble before picking up, sailing to his right and driving a spike into what would have, in any other time, been a Chicago Bulls win.