1) Damian Lillard played an excellent series against Oklahoma City. Damian Lillard is an excellent basketball player. Damian Lillard had the stones to take a shot at the end of a tied basketball game that he had at least a 60 percent chance of missing. He made it. And after he made it, we got a number of unfortunate draft takes about how Darius Garland is a replica of Damian Lillard and thus should be taken very highly.

Damian Lillard going bonkers should only strengthen Darius Garland's standing as a top-5 pick. Obviously not identical players but Garland's ability to shoot off the dribble with range in a variety of ways should be more coveted than ever. https://t.co/WxtN4yS8sJ pic.twitter.com/IbVurnS5ZP — Mike Schmitz (@Mike_Schmitz) April 24, 2019

Typical of draft takes, these ones also do not really aim for consistency of logic. If Darius Garland were actually a replica of Damian Lillard, why is he only a top 5 prospect and not a top 2 prospect? Wouldn’t Damian Lillard, knowing what we know now, be considered the best or second best prospect in this draft?

But these draft takes do not go so far. They are hedge ranking, backed off the same kind of thought that had many people ranking Brandon Ingram over Ben Simmons. Because deep down, we know that Darius Garland doesn’t really resemble Damian Lillard, even if there are surface qualities that could tie the two players together. The jump shot. The ability to find space. The mentality for the game as a scorer in a point guard’s body. All important facets of a player’s game.

2) As an aside, when talking about if that Lillard shot was a good shot, you have to take time and score into context. It certainly wasn’t the worst shot, and at that point in the game, even a bad one. After all, any shot taken at the appropriate time — one in which is sure to essentially run out the clock and not give the team another opportunity — is a good one.

Even a 25 percent shot under that scenario, assuming that overtimes are 50-50 (and if teams are not evenly matched, they ultimately shouldn’t be 50-50, unless there is funny business from referees), ups win probability to 62.5 percent. Under this assumption, a 40 percent shot bumps the win probability up to 70 percent. With the shot Lillard took, at least seven out of ten times the Blazers win, but we have to remember that when the shot was taken is much more important than where the shot was taken from, or even the precise likelihood that it will go in.

A shot taken too early gives the Thunder enough time to come back down the court and have for themselves. And that would bump the win probability down, perhaps significantly depending on the nature of the miss. Lillard misses that shot something like 60 percent of the time or more. In every one of those scenarios, if the shot is taken too early, the Thunder have a chance to win.

That’s the real value of the step-back 3-pointer in this scenario — it is a way to absolutely control clock and still get a reasonable shot off. That’s much more difficult when driving towards the rim, which brings a number of confounding factors into play, not the least of which is multiple bodies and the increased chance of turnover, or not getting a shot off at all.

That’s before we even account for the fact that it’s difficult to precisely time the drive so that shot generated from it ends the game, since we can’t know for sure if the drive will end in a shot or a pass, and if it ends in a shot, just where the shot will be taken from and what type of shot it will be? Presumably you’d like to give yourself enough time to kick it to a 3-point shooter if need be.

The isolation step-back jumper eliminates all that mess. It’s the easiest way, especially when you have a player of Lillard’s caliber, to ensure your team truly gets the last shot. But if we’re examining the shot based on the likelihood of Lillard making it, without considering both time and score, and determining a 38 percent shot is a good one, we are making an overly simplistic analysis that comes to likely the right conclusion, but for reasons that are ultimately less important to just why it was a good shot. And thus false. Shot charts can be an easy way out of providing actually insightful analysis.

3) Here’s the problem for Garland. He has Lillard’s most obvious strength (the shooting ability and shiftiness to allow him to functionally use it) and his most obvious weakness (the fact that he’s not really a point guard), but lacks all of the less obvious (and super strong) strengths of Lillard’s college profile that indeed allow the rest of his game to play to the ability it does.

I’m talking about athleticism, explosion, decision-making and specifically, the ability to almost never make mistakes.

4) We can see these on the court, and we could see them even when Lillard was a freshman. (Note that I am not saying I saw them when Lillard was a freshmen. Like almost everyone else, I had no clue who Lillard was at that point in time.)

5) Though it should be pointed out that Lillard then was not close to being the Lillard we know now. We could see him forming on the court, but the guy we see now doesn’t make himself known really until his sophomore year.

Lillard was always a better caretaker of the ball than Garland, but it’s in Lillard’s sophomore season that we see the first evidence of it being a potentially special indicator of future success with an up in both true shooting attempts and assists with a drop in turnovers to sub 3 per 40 minutes, and only 4.1 per 100 possessions.

In contrast, Darius Garland turned the ball over 4.3 times per 40 minutes against sub-solid early season competition and 6.3 times per 100 minutes. This is a major departure point in the profiles of these two players.

Beyond that, we see Lillard’s ability to get to the line at the college level emerging. Indeed, he was one of the best ever in terms of getting to the line when considering the types of shots he was taking, and really good at getting there overall. Of course, we didn’t see that as much as a freshmen. And since I didn’t see Lillard’s freshman season, I can’t say why that was. However, I can point to why Garland is unlikely to match Lillard there.

It comes down to explosion and suddenness. Lillard’s ability to get to the rim in college essentially allowed him to greatly limit his 2-point jumpers, whereas Garland due to being less bursty and less explosive, had to settle for numerous 2-pt jump shots (which to his credit he made).

Of course, he shot a fair number Lillard never even would have considered.

This is another notable difference in the profiles of the two players.

6) We can also see them statistically. The statistical qualities that make Lillard’s profile unique are these. Unassisted scores at the rim. Unassisted scores at the rim as a function of total shots made. Unassisted jumpers. Unassisted 3-point jumpers. Free throws made. Free throws attempted. Free throws attempted as a ratio to 2-point field goal attempts. Free throw percentage. Low turnovers. Low turnovers as a function of offensive burden. Harmonic Assists. Steals. 2-point percentage. 3-point percentage.

Low turnovers and the free throw stats are perhaps particularly important here.

7) Now let’s list the categories in which Garland fails to measure up:

Unassisted scores at the rim. Unassisted scores at the rim as a function of total shots made. Free throws made. Free throws attempted. Free throws attempted as a ratio to 2-point field goal attempts and field goal attempts. Free throw percentage. Low turnovers. Low turnovers as a function of offensive burden. Harmonic Assists. Steals.

Basically everywhere but unassisted jump shooting.

8) You may say, quite rightly, that Lillard wasn’t even Lillard as a freshman and that he improved a lot. Here’s the thing: Lillard was also not Garland as freshman, and perhaps more importantly, Lillard had the advantage of outsider disinterest, which allowed him to stay in school, learning how to utilize his strengths against a lower level of competition.

The NBA has argued that they are better at developing players than college. A straight up question: do you think if Lillard goes pro as a freshman he ends up anywhere near as good as he is now? Isn’t it possible, and even likely, that the answer is “not a chance”, and more than that, that the extra years in college helped? At the very least, that it helped in the summer between his freshman and sophomore years.

9) Still, even acknowledging Lillard wasn’t yet Lillard as a freshman, we can’t get around the obvious. Garland isn’t explosive as Lillard was, and Garland isn’t the caretaker/decision-maker that Lillard was.

Jump shooting is very important, but jump shooting on its own is not enough. Not even close. Not when the top competition can make passes like these.

Which is not to say Garland can’t improve. There exists that possibility since sufficiently great jump shooters distort the defense and create openings that few players have. But Garland right now is much, much, much more likely to not be Lillard than to be Lillard. In fact, though his on court game resembles Lillard’s on the surface, his underlying offensive strengths and weaknesses, the way he actually plays, if we can look past that he shoots a deep step-back jumper, actually compares much more favorably to Lillard’s teammate CJ McCollum.

10) You can see it in the basic unassisted numbers of their shooting profiles.

Garland has so many unassisted 2-point jumpers as a percentage of his shots for two reasons. He made an unsustainable percentage of them in a small sample. He took a hell of a lot of them. CJ McCollum also took a hell of a lot of these types of shots in college career. Whereas Lillard largely avoided them, as he got to the rim at much, much higher rates and didn’t often force attempts when no good shot presented itself.

11) You can also see this similarity in other decision-making categories. For instance, McCollum carried a similarly poor assist-to-turnover ratio as a sophomore, with exactly four turnovers for every three assists. Though McCollum was always better at turning the ball over less. (6.3 per 100 possessions as Garland had is a very high number for someone who doesn’t produce oodles of assist opportunities.)

12) What I’m doing here is pointing to Garland’s likely best role if he achieves his upside. It’s not likely to be as a primary, but rather more likely to be as a secondary creator, as McCollum is. A guy who plays off of Lillard with real success and who could perhaps man the point, also with real success, playing off of a player like Giannis or Ben Simmons as well, but not himself a Lillard, Harden or Curry type where he makes the offense. (I’d argue the latter is McCollum’s ideal role, one in which his defense is likely to play up quite a bit.)

13) The only problem here is that big-time secondary creators do mostly have capped upsides while using lots of possessions on offense and getting paid in precisely the same way that their betters are. That means they almost have to bring defensive ability to the table to be big-time pieces on true contenders. This argument would be far easier to make for McCollum, were he to somehow end up next to a big initiator like Giannis, Simmons, Lebron or Doncic, than it would be for Garland, who is small, not particularly strong and contact avoidant.

14) Monthly reminder. The point guard position in the NBA is difficult. Incredibly difficult. Right now it’s Steph, Harden, Lillard, Kyrie, Lowry, and CP3 as the big guns. That’s it. Six guys, two who are on the same team, and there are notable tiers even within those six. After that comes Holiday, Kemba, Bledsoe, McCollum, Walker, and Conley in some order perhaps as guys who could man the position on a contender if they had the right set of teammates. Another six guys, and that’s only because I counted one of them twice. And counting that CJ plays out of position as a shooting guard, only ten teams possess most of the truly viable point guards. Maybe twelve or thirteen, if we admit that Beverley, White and Mitchell have arguments here as well, pending the right set of teammates.

“The right set of teammates” for most of these guys is the operative phrase. It’s not that a player’s teammates aren’t always important, but the guys in the first list are either table-setters, good enough to make championship caliber offenses go, or, at least, as in the case of Lowry, good enough on offense that their defensive qualities have to be noted as uniquely important. Whereas the guys in the second list, when we are talking about truly championship level caliber teams, need to play next to someone better than them to bring out their best most efficient selves. There’s no shame in that. Just a reality.

15) Now ask yourself a question. Be honest. Do you believe Garland belongs with the names in that first group?

And another. Do you believe Garland belongs with the names in that second group?

And one more. If he does belong with the names of the players in that second group, where is he as good, and where is he worse?

16) Another way to state the question. Where would you rank Darius Garland in this group as a defensive player coming out of college? Isn’t it clear, without thinking about it, that Garland is significantly worse on defense coming out than any player in this group besides perhaps Lillard? (Lillard was better, but he was also older and wiser and had natural growth to thank.)

17) So Garland is not as good as Lillard on offense, and, because of his specific relative weaknesses, not likely to be so, but he’s likely to be as bad as Lillard coming into the league on defense. What’s more, precisely because Garland’s not as good on offense (great turnover free offense leads to easier defensive possessions) and because of his relative weaknesses (slender frame, lack of defensive athleticism, strength) he’s not likely to improve on defense in the ways that Lillard has. Where does that place him as a player?

18) Or more to the point, let’s stop making lazy comparisons that obscure the truths we wish to discover. And if you are going to compare Darius Garland to Damian Lillard, please perform the next logical step and rank Darius Garland where such a comparison should place him, which is in the top two of the draft. And if not, let’s take an actual look at Garland and Lillard in relationship to each other, looking at the entirety of their games and not single facet, acknowledging that their dissimilarities as players are likely to be every bit as important as their one commonality.

Remember, looking at a single facet of one’s game rather than the totality, is how we got takes like Brandon Ingram is better than Ben Simmons in 2016.

*Thanks to sports-reference.com and hoop-math.com and to the makers of the highlight video I used.