After laying low for a while following surgery, Trail Blazers guard Damian Lillard has been out and about a bit more as of late. He's granted a number of interviews, traveled to Cleveland for the celebration of the Top 75 players in NBA history, of which he is included, at All-Star weekend and dropped a verse on a recently-released Mic Capes track.
He also joined his friend Draymond Green on his relatively new podcast, aptly titled "The Draymond Green Show," for over an hour of discussion about basketball, his career and life in general. It's a great interview that is worth watching/listening to from start to finish, but some of the high points...
Lillard thoughts on the trades the Trail Blazers have made recently and his thoughts on the team's direction...
“I think what we’ve done is put ourselves in a position we have not been in. When we signed (Evan Turner), we signed Moe (Harkless), we signed (Al-Farouq Aminu), Meyers (Leonard), we signed a bunch of people and we haven’t been in this position with talent on the roster already since I’ve been here. You look at what Ant (Simons) is doing and then you look at what Nas (Little) was doing before he got hurt then you add (Jusuf Nurkic), Josh Hart, Joe Ingles, we got some pieces to the puzzle now that we just got to use what we have available to add to that. It’s just a matter of us being able to execute that, we in play to get something done. I trust the fact that we gonna be able to execute it. We’ve just got to see where that land. That’s where we’re at now: we’ve just got to see where we land at the end of it.”
Lillard on the notion that players, especially free agents, are not interesting in playing in Portland...
“I think part of it is that, but I mean, people going to Oklahoma City. No offense but people going to Oklahoma City, people going to Milwaukee, you know what I mean? People are going places and Portland ain’t what people think it is, otherwise I wouldn’t have been living here this long. If you just couldn’t live here, I wouldn’t be living here this long. I think that’s part of it but at the end of the day, people are going places that’s like ‘You went there?’ Melo went to OKC when we was trying to get Melo to come here. Ask Melo where he would go first. And I’ll say this: not just because of the living situation.
"People that play with me, I don’t play the game selfishly, I don’t operate selfishly. I want to see everybody having they way. I want to see everybody be happy, do they thing and even on the court, I don’t get in the way of that. I know how to do me while not getting in the way of everybody else having an opportunity. I’m not holding onto the ball until I can get an assist or a shot or all that. I’m passing ahead, hockey assist, boom boom, I’m making the right play. I ain’t (expletive) walking around the facility and everywhere trying to run everything and have everything my way. I play fair. So when you consider all those things, come on, that can’t be the reason. It’s like, sometimes honestly it looks like which route is the easiest? ‘Over here they got this dude and that dude, so if I go over there,’ and then when they get there it’s like ‘I ain’t getting my shots, I ain’t getting my numbers, I can’t do me’ and then you see them going somewhere else. It’s like bruh, you could have just came and got with somebody that can meet you there. I ain’t trying to compete with you, I know how to win and I know how to get along with people and make (stuff) work.”
Lillard on his reasons for not being more vocal with the front office regarding trades while also not standing in the way...
"I think that’s definitely played a part in it because I think the solid parts of me are like, I can’t go in there and say ‘Do this and do that, do that’ and be putting other people’s lives and they families in they situation out like it ain’t nothing. I never felt comfortable operating like that. Before now, I’ve reached a point where I knew that I can’t ask the team to say ‘Give me an opportunity to win’ and then not be willing to deal with the hurt that comes with that. And that don’t mean I’m going in there telling them ‘Do this’ or ‘Do that’ but I’m telling them ‘I’m not going to tell y’all what to do but I’m also not going to stop y’all from doing y’all job. I want y’all to give us a chance to win.’ That’s my stance is like, give us a chance to win. Don’t feel like Dame is gonna be mad or anything like that because there’s been plenty of times throughout my time in the league where it was like, Mo Williams is my guy to this day, we didn’t bring him back. (Thomas Robinson) was my guy. None of this stuff goes over easy so it’s just like, they know where I stand: give us a chance to really win. So I do think that has played a part, probably.
"Another thing is I don’t think being an alpha to me don’t mean to be like the loudest one telling everybody everything. To me, being an alpha is the presence of an alpha is more known than anything. I don’t think anybody that’s been around, anybody that’s been around, they’ll know. ‘I ain’t know that was there’ until they see it’s there and they be like ‘It all makes sense now.’ That’s been my stance but I do think, for a long time in my career, I took too much of a stance of like, ‘I don’t want to see that’ happen type thing when it’s like, you can’t want to win and also want everything to be all peachy. It don’t work like that."