What can Lillard and Giannis learn from Curry and Durant’s pairing?

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages...Damian Lillard, Son of Oakland, certified Town legend, and maybe the greatest player in modern Portland Trail Blazers history has been traded to Milwaukee to join forces with the arguably the most dominant physical force in today’s game: Giannis Antetokounmpo.

Ruh roh! In NBA 2K it sounds like a matchup made in heaven. Lillard is the point guard in the league who can actually shoot the rock with anything consistently approaching Curryesque exploits. He’s also notorious for explosive finishes through and around defenders as he blazes to the rim (no pun intended) with relentless dribble attacks and footwork.

Can you imagine the damage he can do next to the Greek Freak? That’s a 6-foot-11 unicorn who is somehow constantly finding a downhill gear to wreck anyone unfortunate enough to be in his path. The pick-and-roll possibilities between these two may break the NBA.

Then again...maybe it won’t materialize into anything approaching a championship level. We’ve seen several alleged superteam combinations fizzle out before even reaching the conference finals. Just look at the Brooklyn Nets formidable triumvirate Kyrie Irving, James Harden, and Kevin Durant triumvirate that faded into nothingness after only 16 games played together.

And quite frankly, Dub Nation can look in very recent golden history to see how even the Hamptons 5 unstoppable dynasty version had some adversity to overcome as Durant and Stephen Curry learned how to play with each other.

Remember that 2016 Christmas Day game defeat to the reigning champion Cleveland Cavaliers in Ohio where Curry struggled and critics rushed to judge the championship prospects in the Bay?

Here’s some of Curry’s thoughts after the Warriors figured out how to better partner him with Durant:

“For sure, I’ve got to be aggressive,” Curry said. “The thing about us, we do have a lot of talent, there’s a balance in that to it.

“But for me, to initiate the offense with pick-and-rolls or whatever set, I’ve got to be aggressive to look to score, to look to draw attention, and good things will happen out of that, knowing that we’ve got so many other playmakers on the floor and the rest will happen as well.

“We continue to work on that balance… pretty much since the Christmas Day game and like the flow that we have, especially when we’re playing defense at this level and turning that into easy offense along the way and executing in the half-court as well.”

And in 2019 Curry further expounded on how he had to learn on the fly how to play with a superweapon like KD:

“There was always around like the shot distribution and who would have to sacrifice the most [between] Me, Klay, Draymond, Andre, with KD on the squad,“ Curry told Woj. “And to be honest, that first year, playing together, it was me in terms of how I was used to getting shots. How I was used to playing or what not so I had to make adjustments. And at times, it was difficult.”

Curry cited the Christmas Day game against the Cleveland Cavaliers as one of the most difficult examples of the adjustment period. During that game, Curry struggled from the field, only scoring 14 points and just played passively.

We’ll have to stay tuned to see if Lillard and Giannis will put it together at the level Steph and KD did. CAN’T WAIT TO SEE IT LIVE!