Exhale Blazers Fans, Damian Lillard Has No Interest In Selling Out For A Ring
In today’s NBA where every star player seems to be demanding a trade or trying to find a super team to join, it’s refreshing to hear Dame have this approach. Lillard is in the third year of his 5/139M extension, and has a season at $29M and one in 2020-21 at 31M before he hits the open market. So right off the bat this isn’t exactly the time he would demand a trade, if anything that would happen at some point next season, similar to what Anthony Davis is doing right now. It feels like despite his loyalty, people are always trying to break up the Dame/CJ backcourt. Since Lillard showed up in 2012-13 the Blazers have missed the playoffs just once, but at the same time haven’t gone past the second round, and have three first round exits. For most players of his caliber, that would start to light a fire under them that it was time to get the hell out of Portland and find a new situation.
That’s why I think it’s pretty cool that Dame is so committed to the city and the Blazers organization. He said it himself, he’s not willing to sell out for a championship. That’s not something we’re really seeing in today’s NBA. We see stars not give a shit and sell out immediately if they have an opportunity to join a super team. Just in recent years you had Durant in GS, now you have Davis literally blowing up his entire franchise just to find a way out. That’s honestly what this league has become recently and while the players have every right to go and play wherever they want, that doesn’t mean it’s the only way you have to be.
Lillard is right in what he says too about how it would impact everyone. If Dame demands a trade, well that’s it, Portland is going to blow everything up. He’s their franchise player so if he’s out the Blazers would be smart to hop on the tanking train and try to speed up their rebuilding process. That means guys like CJ McCollum are probably moved, same with Jusuf Nurkic, etc. It’s a bigger thing than Dame just trying to latch on to an easy path to a ring and it’s pretty interesting that something like that truly impacts his way of thinking. That’s a guy who gets it.
We’ll obviously have to see how loyal he is to Portland in a few seasons when he hits the open market, but if I’m a Blazers fan this morning I feel pretty damn good. Given what we’re seeing all these other stars do around the league it’s only fair they may be a little nervous how their own franchise player may act given their limited postseason success. But it seems like Dame isn’t about that snake life and that should be celebrated in my opinion.