Is Damian Lillard just Kyrie Irving without LeBron James?

Damian Lillard is a great player. So is CJ McCollum. In most eras, they’d probably be the best offensive guard tandem in the league but now, of course, that title belongs to their current playoff opponents, the Golden State Warriors. Still, if the one brings the other to mind, it’s no wonder. The Golden State tandem scored 3,741 points this year, while the Blazers two poured in 3,861. Each shot more than 400 3-pointers this year, and made them at an excellent clip (37 percent for Dame, 41.1 percent for Steph, 41.4 percent for Klay, 42 percent for CJ). Steph had 523 assists to Dame’s 439, while C.J. had 285 to Klay’s 160.

Yet — and I’m sure I’m far from the first person to ever think this — the real comparison for Dame Lillard may be Kyrie Irving, the guy who plays on the other legendary team, the Cleveland Cavaliers. The two situations are very different, where Dame is either his team’s best player or close, and nobody is really close to as good as LeBron James. But for all that, Lillard and Irving’s seasons were remarkably similar.

And that’s even, surprisingly, when you consider usage. In 35.1 minutes per game, at a 30.8 usage rat taking 19.7 shots a game, Kyrie averaged 25.2 points and 5.8 assists on .473/.401/.905 shooting.  In 35.9 minutes, with a 31.5 percent usage, taking 19.8 shots a game, Dame managed 27 points and 5.9 assists on .444/.370/.895. I mean, that’s some eerie stuff, frankly.

Of course, it’s not like shooting stats and assist stats tell the whole picture, but nothing much stands out in advanced stats either. Dame’s the slightly better rebounder, Kyrie has the slightly better assist percentage, pretty much identical turnover percentages (10.3 to 10.2), and similarly poor defense. Which is before considering that you should associate the two guys with a lot of the same things: crazy handles, deep, deep range, and an uncanny ability to come up big in big moments.

The big x factor here is obvious, and it’s that there is no way to simulate what LeBron does for other players. There probably isn’t even a historical comparison, he’s so good. Dame does what he’s doing without having to defer to anybody, but with defenses keyed on stopping him, while Kyrie gets easier shots not just because of what LeBron’s presence does to defenses but LeBron’s own uncanny vision and basketball IQ. Still, you can bet that if Kyrie were in Dame’s place, he’d probably score a little more with lower shooting numbers — precisely the statistical difference between the two players this year.

Obviously, we cannot actually know what Kyrie would look like, statistically, without LeBron, or what Dame would look like with him. But one thing I think about a lot is that the easiest thing to do as fans is malign a guy who’s at the bottom of one tier and prop up a guy who’s at the top of the next. I say this, because as CJ McCollum emerges as the great player he seems like he’s becoming, it’ll be all too easy to forget about Dame — particularly in this era of giants when it’s hard to think any team has a chance that is merely good to very good. We will likely, in other words, begin to dog him for being only a little better than Kyrie, with similar defects, while the Cav’s guy gets both the on-court benefits of playing with LeBron and the reputation benefits of winning with him. In that sense, hard as it is to believe, I wrote this in a sense to prop Dame up.

Next: The New York Knicks continue to be a walking paradox

Damian Lillard is a very special player who, like any of them not in Cleveland or San Francisco these days, is probably not long for this or the next playoffs. That doesn’t mean anything about him, it means something about the historical moment basketball is at. On the other hand, so is Kyrie Irving, who will some day get the chance to go it alone but is today doing what he does, aided and abetted by maybe the greatest player in the history of the game.