Trail Blazers point guard Damian Lillard has been on the cover of SLAM Magazine before. The first time was back in February 2014, with the cover featuring a baby-faced Lillard in the 2014 Western Conference All-Star uniform -- Lillard would ultimately competed in all five events at the 2014 All-Star Weekend in New Orleans. A year later, Lillard was back on the cover of the February 2015 edition of SLAM despite being left off the All-Star team that season.
A year and a half later, Lillard, wearing a Bill Walton "Hardwood Classics" jersey graces the cover of the January 2017 edition of SLAM. And or the first time, the magazine is devoting an edition to the interplay between music and basketball, which makes Lillard, who released his first album, The Letter O, and started his own music label this year, the ideal coverboy for the edition, which should be on newsstands (they do still exist!) sometime in the very near future.
While the story accompanying the cover has not yet released -- they've got to give you some reason to actually buy the magazine -- they did record a behind-the-scenes video with Damian at the practice facility during the shoot discussing how he got into music.