Agreed, but he could have just as easily framed his answer in a different way. Besides, when's the last time someone, whose team was winning, had more than 50 or so, and was clearly chasing points?
60 is just the next milestone up from 50. It would be weird if he said "I don't want to stay in the game during a blowout to chase 59 points." He could have framed it another way, but no need to attack him for giving a perfectly good answer. Harden had a historic night scoring 60 in a game that wasn't a blowout, that's not the situation Lillard was talking about. Although to answer your question, Harden had 48 points in the blowout against the Suns and stayed in the 4th quarter to put up a few shots to try to get 50. CP3 teased him about it in the postgame interview. Harden isn't a stat padder, just saying.
So the question was "why didn't you stay in the game to get more points," right? He could have given credit to his coaches for management of minutes, given credit to inexperienced teammates ("rooks need some burn," etc) or he could have credited his team, somehow. But to say stuff about character, and how a player "chasing" 60 has bad character seems to indicate that he was thinking of a particular player or situation when he was formulating his answer. Not attacking Lillard by any means, but I'm just saying that there were other ways to answer the question without indirectly / possibly starting controversy, big or small. I'm sure a player(s) will see this quote by Lillard and think about it.
If Dame actually tried to toss shade at Harden, gravity would take over well prior to it ever getting there.
I dont see any shade or anything of the like. I think OP has been oversensitive. Portland has a horrible defence so it pretty much meant what he said.
Harden 60 came with a 4 point play with us up by 1 with a minute left. It seems the OP is throwing shade. Stop projecting.Every Harden points counted. He was not stat chasing. If Harden was stat chasing he could average 38 to 40 a night this season
I mean I would too if I had to play for the Blazers.. then again Portland is beautiful and Seattle is close by.