Damian Lillard He has once again maintained his vision of the nba, the one from before and the one from now, and the thought beyond the fight to win a championship. The player, with excellent numbers and several important records in the League, winner of the Triples Contest this year, living myth of the Portland Trail Blazers, has been 11 seasons at the age of 32 and the idea of him does not change.
In a conversation with JJ Redick on the podcast The Old Man And The Three he maintains that his standards are different from those of the people who continually demand that he search for the Ring:
“The NBA that I play right now is not the NBA that I came to. I feel like I play for the love of art. I want to compete, I want to know what it feels like to win, I want my colleagues to do well and be well paid… I see the positive side of that, but it seems that now it doesn’t count. The ‘regular season’ is not valid. Win the Ring!”
“When I landed, you had to earn it. But the space itself in the team. ‘Oh, you’re the sixth pick in the draft? Well, this is your team. What is that about a team being your team? The biggest difference I see in that is that you don’t have as much of a veteran presence anymore. You have the most talented players who have ever entered the League, who are chosen in 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, who take more money than those who have won those ‘picks’ in all of history and on top of that they have the franchise keys
In the dialogue, he expresses his conviction that his life off the track should be above what he achieves on it.
“I don’t have to prove to you that I want to win a championship. Why the hell would he play if not? I understand that we play for it and that we want it, but we cannot act as if the rest does not matter at all. As if the path did not mark. We can not do it. There are so many ways this league is different, so many… But I don’t know if I can play much longer because I don’t enjoy what the entire NBA is now.”
“I have a real life. I go home, I play with my children, I go to my mother’s house, I’m with my cousins, I talk to my grandmother on the phone, I chat with my uncle all night… All of that is normal. I have a life that is stable and not based on who I am as an NBA player. For example, I have a friend who can work from anywhere and since he’s single, he comes to Portland on a one-way ticket and stays at my house for weeks. When my career is over, you are not going to talk about me; you will do it from Luka Doncic, Ja Morant, Jayson Tatum or whoever, that data will come from me about the accumulated games of 40 or 50 points as a Portland player ”
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Damian Lillard is in his best scoring numbers this 2022/23 season in the eleven seasons he has played. He is averaging 32.3 with a 46.5% success rate from the field. The Blazers have been through their ups and downs and find themselves further and further from a place in the play-in despite the performance of his player-insignia.