Zombie Damian Lillard to request trade in coming days (nope, he's not.)

I sincerely doubt that a young Bosnian has heard of Abbot and Costello...

 

Pinkus has been around for a while. He was with Hoopsworld back when I was covering the team. He was pretty connected with the Clips. I don't remember how connected he was with the Lakers. With that said, the Lakers can "hope" all they want. We're not going to give Dame away for a song (if it comes to trading him).

 

would Nurk deny it this hard if he hadn’t talked to Dame first?

 

Dude, give it a rest. That OPB article didn't do shit to Dame. And if you really think Dame would decide on a whim to uproot his life and his family's lives from a place where they spent a decade of time, I don't know what to tell you.

i really don't think some of you realize how embedded Dame and his family are in the community in Portland.

 

If it’s true I would just tell him no. Put your big boy pants on and deal with it. You have 3 years left on your contract.

Dame hash no leverage from what I see. What’s he going to do, sit out for 3,years?

 

It's a reporter's trick. You throw something out there to see if you can get someone close to a situation to bite. You keep asking questions and use that as a path to take.

You have no idea whether he's giving ground or not. No one does. There's no definite. You seem to be reading into what Abbott tweeted like you were hearing it. I'm looking at it from multiple angles and another way to read that is he's casting bait ... but he certainly didn't respond to Nurk with a forceful rebut ... he answered his question with a question ... which is a way to make it look like you're answering without actually answering.

 

Yet, some guy from Dame's camp would reach out to Henry Abbott of all people to inform him of this new development? Make it make sense.

 

From the horse's mouth, here you go:

https://sports.yahoo.com/damian-lil...f-we-want-to-win-on-that-level-160144638.html

 

if the rumours were true, given how close are dame & nurk, i really think dame would tell nurk to stop posting in order not to make an idiot of himself

i mean, thats what a friend would do, right, right...

 

Fuck this rumor and fuck Henry Abbott

I’m not gonna forget these dudes who are just making up shit

 

Again, I find this all very unlikely.

He has been held up at gunpoint, and didn't back down.
He has had to deal with racist cops.
He has been undervalued most of his career.

But, he can't handle some SJWs on twitter?

If he actually can't handle the criticism, it's really a bad look for him.

 

CH: I have to ask you about your situation with the Trail Blazers. With all you’ve done for the franchise on and off the court, do you feel like that same level of commitment has been reciprocated as far as putting you in position to get your first title?

DL: To make it to the NBA, I had to give it everything I had. I was going to do what needed to be done to win games. I didn’t come into the league worrying about what others were doing in the organization. I didn’t come in with that type of mentality. But I've been active in probably 95% of the games in my career. I’ve played through injuries, and I’ve been a part of two rebuilds. I feel like I’ve experienced everything with the Trail Blazers, and I’ve worn that jersey as a badge of honor and with a lot of pride and care. I never felt like my job was to go in and critique what other people were doing in the organization. My job was to make sure the team is functioning and trying to lead them to the best results. I’ve always assumed everybody’s mentality was the same. Even when I'm playing well and we come up short at the end of the season, I go home and the first thing I do is look in the mirror and tell myself we didn't win a championship. Or if I didn't play as well as I should have, I’ve had to look in the mirror and tell myself that my performance was unacceptable and I have to do better. And then you go do better.

I think that's the stage we're at as a team where we all, not just me, not just my teammates, not just our new coaching staff, the front office, everybody in this organization must look in the mirror because we’ve constantly come up short. We have to look in the mirror and say I have to be better because whatever it is we’re doing is not working and it’s not giving us the shot to compete on the level that we want to compete on.

CH: Having known you for years and your position, why is this current juncture such a pivotal moment for you?

DL: There are few reasons: One being I'm not getting any younger. Our environment has always been great. We’re not losing a lot, but we were eliminated by a shorthanded Denver team that I felt we should have beat. I just walked away from that really disappointed. I was like, ‘Man, this just isn't going to work.’ We're not winning the championship, but we’ve got a successful organization. We're not a franchise that’s just out here losing every year and getting divided. We have positive seasons; we just don't end up with a championship. So I feel like at this point, I basically made the decision that if you do what you’ve always done, you’ll always be where you've always been. Just like I hold myself accountable for a bad performance or hold myself accountable to make sure that I work my ass off when I’m training, I must be accountable for saying what needs to be said even if it's not popular. And that just comes with age. When I was younger, I felt like maybe I'll be out of place, but I feel like I've earned the right to say we must do better. We must do better if we want to win on that level.

 

I don't think there's enough out there to conclude Abbott's report is legit or not.

I'm not familiar with him. I don't know the quality of his sources. I've been around his business long enough, though, to have seen a lot of guys draw traffic to their Twitter with stuff like this and have absolutely nothing, but no one cares once you add all those follows. I've seen, albeit on fewer occasions, where reporters no one knew just happened to be in the right place at the right time and got info before any of the big names did and it launched their careers.

I'm waiting to hear Dame himself address it or the more trusted NBA reporters to vet this before I start speculating. I've got some ideas, but it's pointless to speculate on what's out there at the moment.

 

So again, this is simply Dame simply putting pressure on Neil.

 

Also funny that Haynes adds this:

(Lillard will address a report about his future with the team following Team USA practice on Friday.)

 

Moreover, Dame spent the first 7 years of his career here wielding his influence to keep a sub-par coach and sub-par roster together, insisting he'd prefer to play with "his guys" than mortgage relationships for a championship. Reportedly that shifted this past season, resulting in Neil going out and getting Roco.

I love Dame. And people are certainly allowed to evolve mindsets and priorities. But at some point, some amount of accountability for why we are where we are needs to be put on HIM as the leader of this franchise on and off the court. Yes, it would appear that the organization is a bit of a shitshow right now, and one could understand why that has potentially accelerated his thinking about leaving, but we are where we are as an org, in large part, due to his "loyalty" to the roster and the city. If he turns his back on that as soon as the consequences of that loyalty begin to really rear their ugly head, I will think less of him as a person.

 

Looks EXACTLY like what I've been saying all along. Show Dame you're committed. No more of this tinkering crap. Trade the godfather package and IMPROVE THE FUCKING TEAM.

 

I don't see it as a whim. I'm not saying anything that was going around yesterday would be enough for Dame to go from solidly dedicated to the team for the rest of his career to demanding a trade. It just could have been the straw that broke the camel's back. Yesterday when I saw who that investigator was and saw that we got out investigated by some reporters... I was pretty disappointed with the team.

The fact is no one can say that between the way Olshey announced Stotts firing and took no blame, to the way this hiring process of Chauncey (not Chauncey as the hire but the process and the way it was misrepresented) no one can say that Olshey's already shaky believability hasn't taken a hit. Dame is staking his future on trusting Olshey.

 

Stop with the "Better Franchise" BULLSHIT. I'm sick of that Man! The Lakers are better because they can recruit easier to the fakest place on earth. The Nets are better, why, because a bunch of buddies decide to get together and force moves. There is no better basketball fanbase, and more loyal. LOYALTY, means something. I've got to believe that Dame stands by his words to want to become the greatest Blazer ever.

 

This is the point where they need to decide if the Blazers are going to do the Nets thing and completely sell out the draft future for the next decade to get that 2nd player. A CJ trade alone isn't going to move the needle.