The NBA's most feared time has no set beginning, but it usually ends with a Portland Trail Blazers victory.
"Dame Time" is when mild-mannered Blazers All-Star Damian Lillard transforms into a cold-blooded destroyer of opposing defenses, and it's a big reason Portland was able to rest at home last week instead of needing to reach the playoffs through the NBA's play-in tournament.
Early in a playoff run that Lillard hopes will include more highlights like his series-winning 3-pointers against the Houston Rockets in 2014 and the Oklahoma City Thunder in 2019, it's worth taking a closer look at when Dame Time typically kicks in and just how good Lillard has been in clutch situations this season.
When Dame Time strikes
Vincent Johnson of ESPN Stats & Information broke down Lillard's scoring by minute over the course of the 2020-21 regular season, and a few patterns are evident.
Because I've made the size of the circles representing Lillard's scoring by minute correspond to total minutes played, this chart conveniently shows how regularly he's used by Blazers head coach Terry Stotts. Lillard typically rests the first seven minutes of the second quarter and the first four of the fourth, depending on the score.
Lillard starts slowly as a scorer, averaging his lowest points per minute in the opening two minutes of games. His scoring tends to ramp up late in quarters. Aside from the small sample size early in the fourth quarter, Lillard's average creeps up over a point per minute in the final two minutes of the first, second and third quarters -- when he's setting up to ensure Portland will get the final shot by executing two-for-one strategies -- and in the last three minutes of regulation.
That's when Dame Time reaches a crescendo.
In fact, we've rarely seen anyone score as prolifically in the last three minutes of the fourth quarter as Lillard this season. Per Johnson, his 1.45 points per minute in that span were the fourth-highest average for the quarter-century during which play-by-play data is available.
Unparalleled clutch efficiency
It's one thing for Lillard to score so prolifically late in games. It's another for his efficiency to be this impressive.
Before this season, Lillard's effective field goal percentage (eFG%) in what NBA Advanced Stats defines as "clutch" situations -- the final five minutes of regulation or overtime when the score differential is within five points -- was fairly typical for a star.
As players' usage rate in these situations increases, they typically cluster around an eFG% around 45%, meaning their average shot yields 0.9 points after adjusting for the additional value of 3-pointers. Lillard's career clutch eFG% entering this season was a bit better than that at 46%.
This season, Lillard's eFG% in the clutch has jumped to 61.4%, the highest ever for a player who used at least 35% of his team's plays in at least 100 clutch minutes.
To Lillard, that success is partially a product of the way he has attacked defenses over games and determined how they want to stop him.
"Obviously, the end of game I've had success over the course of my career," Lillard told ESPN. "It hasn't always been because of this, but I think as my career has progressed a reason why I'm able to do that year after year late in games is because I'm able to kind of break down the defense over the course of the game.
"Whether I'm making or missing shots is one thing, but knowing what's going to be available and how I can get to what I'm going to get to is part of that process."
There's some evidence to back this up. Among the 32 players who have attempted at least 50 shots in clutch situations this season, Lillard's shot quality ranks fourth, according to Second Spectrum's quantified shot quality metric (qSQ), which accounts for the location and type of shot and distance to nearby defenders.
Of course, Lillard's shot-making (measured by quantified shooter impact, the amount by which his actual eFG% exceeds his qSQ) also ranks fourth in this group.
Dame Time helped Blazers survive injuries
It's not a stretch to say Lillard's heroics were the difference between Portland securing the sixth seed and meeting up with the Denver Nuggets, or finishing seventh and needing to traverse the perilous play-in tournament -- a fate the Blazers wanted to avoid after beating the Memphis Grizzlies for eighth in last year's play-in matchup and then running out of gas in a 4-1 series loss to the eventual champion Los Angeles Lakers.
Similarly to 2019-20, Portland's season was disrupted by injuries to starters CJ McCollum and Jusuf Nurkic, who went down in consecutive games in mid-January and did not return until March 16 (McCollum) and March 26 (Nurkic).
During that 25-game span without the team's second- and third-best players, the Blazers were predictably outscored by opponents, with an average point differential of minus-1.0 point per game. Yet Portland managed to go 14-11 to avoid losing much ground in the West playoff race. The disconnect between the Blazers' differential and their above-.500 record can be explained by their going 8-4 in games decided by five points or fewer, tied with the Brooklyn Nets for the most close wins in the league during that stretch.
Overall, Portland's 15 wins by five points or fewer tied for second in the league. Over the past two seasons, the Blazers have 28 such wins, tied with the Sacramento Kings for the most and second only to the Thunder in terms of winning percentage in close games.
Portland's strong performance in close games isn't solely attributable to Lillard. Improbably, the team also had the third-best defensive rating in clutch situations this season despite ranking 29th overall in points allowed per 100 possessions.
However, the Blazers' league-leading 126.7 clutch offensive rating is more a product of Dame Time.
Late-game Lillard heroics weren't necessary in Saturday's Game 1, when Denver never got closer than 11 points in the final three minutes after Portland broke open the game midway through the fourth quarter. Lillard scored just twice in the period: a deep 3 with 4:37 remaining to give the Blazers a 10-point edge as part of an 11-0 run and two free throws in the final minute with the Nuggets intentionally fouling.
Inevitably, these two closely matched teams will play a tighter game at some point soon. And expect Dame Time to be right on time.