"Seriously, he's won nothing" - Skip Bayless recalls conversation with Damian Lillard after Portland star's Twitter outburst
If you're aware of sports analyst Skip Bayless, you also probably know of his habit to mince no words while criticizing NBA players. Several stars have taken offense to the same including Damian Lillard who hit out at him last night on Twitter.
Skip Bayless had referred to the Portland Trail Blazers' game against the LA Clippers where Dame went absolutely dry in the dying embers of the game and his side lost 117-122.
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Skip Bayless wasn't going to pull any punches on this week's episode of Undisputed and started off by questioning Damian Lillard's authority to speak the way he does.
"Damian Lillard has often spoken out like he's one of the leaders of the NBA. He sometimes speaks as if he's LeBron James...What exactly has Damian Lillard ever won to achieve this kind of stature in this league? Because seriously, he's won nothing."
The idea that echoed off Skip Bayless for the majority of the show was that he wanted to see more from Dame Dolla.
Skip Bayless revisits phone call with Damian Lillard
Back in May, Damian Lillard had made a controversial comment that he wouldn't participate in the seeding games unless the Portland Trail Blazers had a serious chance of making it to the playoffs. Skip Bayless wasn't too impressed by that and had a few harsh words to say about him. This eventually resulted in the call between the two players that Lillard talked about in his tweets.
Skip Bayless elucidated that Damian Lillard kept reiterating the fact that he was clutch and to that end, the former referred to the Western Conference Finals from last year. He brought out the stats for each of the four quarters from the series where Portland got swept 4-0 by the Golden State Warriors.
"In those four quarters plus that one overtime Damian Lillard went 8-of-26, that's 31% from the field. And he shot 5-of-17 from the three-point line, that's 29%. He was -30 for those four quarters plus overtime. He was not clutch...Since Damian Lillard entered this league, he has the worst postseason winning percentage in all of the NBA that is 37%. He's 19-32 in these games. Is that all his fault? Absolutely not. But is he a transcendent, king of the NBA kinda player? I'm sorry I haven't seen it yet.
Bayless opined that Lillard feels just because the two had that phone call, there was an unwritten agreement between the two that Skip wouldn't criticize Dame on TV again. But then the analyst added that he's going to call things as he sees them.
"If you go to the bubble and play a game against Boston early in the seed games and you're up one with two minutes left and you disappear down the stretch and you were unclutch, I'm gonna talk about it. And obviously I'm about to get to the Clippers game. If you miss two big free throws and miss a big time three, yeah I'm going to talk about it because I needed to see more of you."
Skip Bayless certainly raised some interesting points during Undisputed. He has a history of being overly harsh in his assessments but is backing them up with stats. We'll have to wait and see if Damian Lillard decides to respond to these comments.
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