Damian Lillard takes credit for ‘changing game’ with Steph Curry

Damian Lillard isn’t anywhere near Steph Curry’s imminent record for the most made three-pointers in NBA history. The Portland Trail Blazers superstar has connected on 2,106 triples throughout his career, tenth most all-time yet still over 800 fewer than his Golden State Warriors counterpart.

Still, with Curry set to supplant Hall-of-Famer Ray Allen at the top of the league’s list of the most prolific three-point shooters ever, Lillard knows he’s also played a key role in the game’s increasing emphasis on the long ball. Why? The still-increasing proliferation of high-volume shooters from deep, a development initially spurred by he and Curry.

“The game has really changed, starting with guys like Steph and myself,” Lillard said on Friday, per Janie McCauley of the Associated Press. “The three-point shooters in the history of the game that we talk about—the Larry Birds, the Mark Prices, Reggie Miller—you look at the numbers and it was three three-pointers attempted per game, two-and-a-half threes attempted per game.”

Curry is launching a career-high and league-leading 13.3 triples per game this season, 4.2 more than Lillard. The latter averaged double-digit long-range attempts in each of the last two seasons, but Lillard’s three-point rate has tailed off in 2021-22 due to early struggles with accuracy amid nagging and ongoing pain from abdominal tendinopathy.

Lillard has always lagged behind Curry in both frequency and precision as a three-point shooter, though. Frankly, James Harden deserves nearly as much credit as he does for basketball’s ever-burgeoning emphasis on the long ball. Curry truly stands apart in terms of that overall influence.

Where Lillard definitely stacks up to Curry when it comes to historical influence, though, is as a deep shooter. He yields more defensive attention from the time he crosses halfcourt than any player in basketball but the two-time MVP, opponents always wary of Lillard stopping on a dime to pull up from 30 feet and beyond. His 43 splashes from 30-plus feet last season, in fact, were two more than Curry’s total.

“But just shooting it from so much deeper, off the bounce, in transition. There’s so many different ways that we’re doing it,” Lillard said of he and Curry. “The game has come a long way as far as shooting.”

Curry enters Saturday’s game against the Philadelphia 76ers needing 10 threes to take Allen’s spot on basketball’s throne of long-range marksmen. Lillard, meanwhile, could return to the court on Sunday versus the Minnesota Timberwolves after missing Portland’s last five games due to management of his abdominal injury.