Damian Lillard is of course the Portland Trail Blazers’ most important scorer and passer, but he’s upped his assists in the month of January considerably in comparison to 2018. His per 100 assist totals this month have jumped by 42 percent over December, and Lillard is up 2.5 assists in January compared to his average in previous months.

So what has Lillard done to become a more patient passer? I see three main changes worth discussing.

First, Lillard has utilized his bounce pass more and more. He doesn’t have the longest arms in the world, and in two-man traps Lillard sometimes tries to hook the ball around defenders. That’s led to a loss of opportunity and sometimes even costly turnovers.

This year he’s going straight through the middle of defenses, splitting them with bounce passes that move around long defenders. Lillard appears to have noticed that bending over to swipe at a ball that’s bounced off the ground is actually much harder to defend than passes that are chest-high, and it’s benefitted him greatly.

This flows into the other thing Lillard has done this year, and that’s connect with Jusuf Nurkic on a level we haven’t really seen before. The two are really clicking, and in a lot of plays between the two the bounce pass comes into play.

Nurkic is constantly looking for the ball, and Lillard has acted almost like a good QB in football — positioning his body as if he’s going to shoot to draw defenders one way, then using his eyes to look where he really wants to go with the ball.

Finally, Lillard has done an excellent job of not rushing and not trying to do too much. He’s forcing it less, and allowing his teammates to clean up. Something he did a lot of earlier this season was jumping without having a plan of what to do with the ball, and it was sort of driving me crazy.

He was getting into positions in or near the lane where he couldn’t take a reasonable attempt, but Lillard would jump anyway and just sort of hope it worked out. It often led to turnovers, and he’s almost cut that sequence out entirely.

In 2019 the Blazers seem to just be moving more on offense, and cutters are orbiting around Lillard in what I see as a concerted effort to help him out. It’s definitely helped that guys like Evan Turner and Jake Layman have made themselves more available on offense.

Lillard has seemed less antsy and more judicious with his passing in January. If he’s had one fatal flaw (outside of his defense) over his time in Portland it’s probably been his propensity to try to do too much on offense. Lillard is now letting the game come to him more, and that’s translated into more assists for him and extra wins for the Blazers.

Watch the full video above to see Lillard on film and in action.

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