NBA Power Rankings: Donovan Mitchell and the legend of Damian Lillard

In this week’s NBA Power Rankings, Donovan Mitchell has big Dwyane Wade energy and the legend of Damian Lillard keeps growing.

Our new look NBA Power Rankings are back, a non-traditional structure for a non-traditional era of professional basketball. The world is no longer just about wins and losses and teams are no longer the primary crucible of basketball power. So each week we’ll be dissecting how basketball power is presently distributed — between players, teams, friendships, diss tracks, aesthetic design choices, across leagues and whatever else has a temporary toehold in this ever-changing landscape.

Who has the power in this week’s NBA Power Rankings?

This is an absolute unicorn — a game-winner on a completely wide-open layup that was created by a well-designed play executed to perfection.

You could go an entire season without seeing a synchronous basketball play this beautiful.

The 76ers looked overmatched in Game 1 and even if they bounce back to make this a series it seems certain they’re going to finish well short of expectations, even those that have been steadily downgraded over the past few months. If you’re a 76ers fan, it might feel like crushing confirmation that the Simmons-Embiid pairing is unworkable. If you’re an opposing GM, it probably feels like time to start swinging for the fences.

There’s a greater than zero chance that Embiid, Simmons, Tobias Harris, Josh Richardson and Al Horford are all available for trade this summer. Each of those pieces could have tremendous value to several different contenders. It’s painful to imagine the 76ers having to start over again but if they want to feed the vultures, the cycle of life could work quickly.

What about going into next season with a young core of Dejounte Murray, Tyler Herro, Caris LeVert and Marvin Bagley?

Sure, the Clippers barely escaped the Mavericks in Game 1, benefiting from a questionable third-quarter ejection for Kristaps Porzingis and giving up 42 points to Luka Doncic. But they also made Doncic work incredibly and likely unsustainably hard for those points, forcing 11 turnovers along the way. And while they were celebrating their Game 1 victory, they got to watch their chief championship rivals — the Lakers and Bucks — sleepwalk through listless and uninspired opening losses.

Before play began on Wednesday, the Clippers had the top title odds in FiveThirtyEight’s NBA predictions. At 35 percent, that model estimated their chances of winning it all to be better than the Lakers’ and Bucks’, combined. Everybody is back in the bubble and there’s every reason to think this roster hasn’t hit its collective peak yet. As the other contenders are struggling, the Clippers seem prepared to cruise.

Donovan Mitchell as Dwyane Wade seems like one of those lazy player comparisons, too obvious and aspirational to really be meaningful. But then he went out and made himself a human battering ram in Game 1 against the Nuggets — 57 points overall, 33 points scored on 25 drives, 12-of-14 shooting on drives, 13 free throw attempts.

He also did this:

Do you remember those 2006 NBA Finals, when Wade beat the best team in the NBA with force of will? When he averaged 34.7 points, 7.8 rebounds, 3.8 assists, 2.7 steals and 16.2 free-throw attempts per game? When for six games, he just attacked the basket relentlessly, not bothering with subterfuge or complexity for the sake sowing defensive confusion? He just went to the rim, over and over again, and dared the Mavericks to stop him. They couldn’t.

It kind of feels like that’s where Donovan Mitchell is right now. Yes, he took an un-Wade-like 15 3-pointers but it was his forceful drives that fueled his epic performance. Granted, the Nuggets won the game because Jamal Murray went off. But nothing they did really stopped Mitchell, or even slowed him down much. With Bojan Bogdanovic and Mike Conley out, the Jazz don’t have enough creation in their rotation to justify taking the ball out of Mitchell’s hands. And why would they when it’s creating high-quality scoring opportunities on nearly every possession?

It might not work out the way it did for the 2006 Heat, but Donovan Mitchell is definitely playing with big Dwyane Wade energy right now.

Damian Lillard’s mythic resume already has two of the biggest NBA game-winners in playoff history. It has his historic bubble run and improbable playoff appearance. And now it has a Game 1 win over LeBron and the vaunted Lakers, a win that was iced and then iced again by his effortless shooting from deep.

His reputation has been inflated so dramatically that a variety of buffoons and reply guys spent the day trying to argue that Lillard had not just surpassed Stephen Curry but that he’d always been ahead. (For the record, Curry is 10-0 against Lillard in the playoffs, holds nearly every meaningful 3-point record, was the first unanimous MVP in NBA history and won three titles in four years).

Lillard is on the verge of crossing over, right before our eyes. The man dissolving, leaving only myth.

Usually, this is a process that takes years, that occurs slowly and quietly, after a player has retired, one mind at a time, a mythos built brick by brick. Like a recession, it’s only revealed in retrospect, when some enterprising reporter rides the silent crest, writes the article that lays out the legend, officially recodifies the history and inserts it into the canon. Lillard beat LeBron James one time and people are putting him ahead of Stephen Curry. What happens if the Blazers win Game 2? What happens if they actually win the series? What happens if it all ends with Lillard draining a miracle 3-pointer at the buzzer, waving LeBron off the court? What if this runs lasts until mid-October and culminates in a parade?

I guess we’ll finally be able to settle the GOAT debate once and for all.