What counts to Damian Lillard

B-Roy · Mar 1, 2019

https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2822795-what-counts-to-damian-lillard

Excellent Article. I love this man.

"Tell Coach to give me the fucking ball," Lillard told Watson.

Watson pulled Lillard aside and tried to calm him down.

"I want the fucking ball," Lillard said.

"The ball will find you," Watson said. He told him to hang in there, keep his head up, keep running the plays.

Later in the game, with just 0.9 seconds left on the clock and trailing by two, Blazers head coach Terry Stotts called a timeout. All game, then-Rockets center Dwight Howard had been fronting Aldridge. Stotts told Aldridge to position himself on the right block and Batum to throw him a lob. "The play was for LaMarcus," Watson recalls.
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There's another Lillard story you should know. It took place off the court. About 35,000 feet above one, actually. It was November 2017, and the Blazers were flying home from Sacramento. They'd just fallen to the previously 3-11 Kings. The loss dropped Portland to just one game above .500. It was another disappointing night in what was turning into a disappointing season and another disappointing performance from the team's starting center, Jusuf Nurkic.

Portland had traded for Nurkic, a 7'0", 275-pound house of a man, back in February. The hope was that he'd shore up the group's interior defense while also providing an injection of offense around the paint. And sometimes he did. But he was just 23 then and coming off a rough three-year stretch in Denver in which he had been bounced in and out of the lineup. His confidence often waned. He could be easily derailed.

This had been one of those nights. He'd missed five of his seven shots. He'd looked despondent at halftime, and so that night, before the Blazers boarded their plane, Lillard approached Evan Turner, a guard who typically sat next to Nurkic on team flights.

"Switch seats with me," he told Turner. Lillard spent the next 90 minutes sitting alongside Nurkic. Reviewing film. Offering encouragement. But also admonishing his propensity to brood.

"We need you," Lillard told him. "And you have to figure out how to give us what we need.

"But," he added, "I'm here for you, whatever you need."

Nurkic scored 14 points the next night. He finished the season with the best Player Efficiency Rating of his career to go along with a scoring average of 14.3 points per game.

"Every time I've ever needed him, he's been there for me," Nurkic says. "Even if I call him in the middle of the night, he's always there."
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e_blazer · Mar 1, 2019

That's a great article about a great player.

Eastoff · Mar 1, 2019

That was a good read. Thanks

CupWizier · Mar 1, 2019

B-Roy said: ↑

https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2822795-what-counts-to-damian-lillard

Excellent Article. I love this man.
Click to expand...

Damian Lillard gets it. He has the perfect balance of confidence and humbleness. I was a huge Roy fan but Lillard came along at the right time to fill that void.

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What counts to Damian Lillard

B-Roy If it takes months

e_blazer Rip City Fan

Eastoff But it was a beginning.

CupWizier Well-Known Member

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What counts to Damian Lillard

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B-Roy If it takes months

e_blazer Rip City Fan

Eastoff But it was a beginning.

CupWizier Well-Known Member

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