Kyrie Irving vs Damian Lillard: Who's better? A statistical comparison

#3 Scoring outside the paint

Lillard guards Kyrie in a regular season game, January 2015. Kyrie hit a career-high 11 3-pointers.

This is a bit of a toughie. Lillard has always relied on his 3-point shooting a lot more than Kyrie has, as evidenced by the fact that 41.4% of his career field goal attempts have been 3-pointers in contrast to Kyrie's rate of 29.9%. In fact, other than the last 2 seasons, Irving has attempted fewer 3-pointers per game than Lillard did in his rookie season.

But since we're talking about their games as of now, Kyrie should be regarded as the better 3-point shooter, since he's attempted a considerable volume of 6.4 3-pointers per game over the last two seasons while averaging 40.4% conversion from downtown. Lillard, by contrast, is averaging a little shy of 8.2 3-pointers taken at a conversion rate of 36.5%.

Kyrie has the advantage in both catch-and-shoot as well as pull-up jump shooting from range, scoring on 39.9% of his catch-and-shoot opportunities and 40.8% on pull-up shooting in comparison to 35.6% and 36.6% for Lillard in the same situations.

Kyrie has better career averages from the mid-range as well, shooting career averages of 45.2% and 45% from 10-16 feet and 16-23 feet in comparison to 41.9% and 43.3% for Lillard.

Edge: Kyrie