Left by Teammates, Overlooked by Fans, Damian Lillard Finds Anger Is an Energy

It’s the kind of question that normally takes a moment to consider: When was the first time someone underestimated you?

But the answer comes quickly for Portland Trail Blazers point guard Damian Lillard. “I was eight years old,” he said without hesitation, as if it had happened yesterday. “It wasn’t basketball. I was a ‘six-plays player’ in peewee football. Everybody has to play at least six plays—and that’s all I played.”

When he quit after one season, Houston Lillard Jr., his older brother by almost four years and a future pro indoor football quarterback, taunted him. “You’re scared,” he said.

Everybody has been told that at some point. Some will admit to it. Others will ignore it. Lillard? He concedes he was scared. He wasn’t built as stocky as his 6’0″, 215-pound brother, or their father, Houston Sr., who early on were men among boys, physically. Getting hit hurt.

The fear of being another kid who couldn’t make it out of Oakland—a place where Lillard a few years later would be robbed at gunpoint at a bus stop—outweighed the fear of physical pain. Once you accept someone’s estimation that you can’t do something, where does it end?

“I think that is one of his biggest fears,” Weber State coach Randy Rahe said.

So began a lifetime of being told he was one thing and wanting to prove he was another. Sixteen years later, nothing has changed. The boos Lillard hears in Oakland’s Oracle Arena whenever he and the Blazers face the No. 1-seeded Golden State Warriors, as they do now in the second round of the playoffs, are the latest affront.

“When they boo me, I figure that’s people who are not from Oakland,” he said before his Trail Blazers found themselves in an 0-2 hole heading into Game 3 at Portland on Saturday. “I doubt it’s anybody I care about.”

Quietly taking every slight personally is how a kid who, in the estimation of one Bay Area talent scout, was “a good but not great” high school player emerged from a self-funded AAU program and a mid-major college to be a lottery pick and the undisputed leader of an NBA playoff team.

“He’s that kind of guy,” Raymond Young, one of his first AAU coaches, said. “When he’s doubted, there’s some kind of fire or energy inside him that—I don’t know how you describe it, because it’s just him. When he’s told, ‘You can’t do nothin,’ or ‘You won’t win this game,’ or ‘You’re not good enough,’ or he feels you think he’s not good enough, he’s out to prove you wrong.”

This season is the latest, greatest example of what that fire can forge. The Blazers dealt or said goodbye to five of their top six scorers from last year’s 51-win team, including All-Star power forward and franchise cornerstone LaMarcus Aldridge. General manager Neil Olshey replaced them with a host of younger, less expensive, unproven players. The average years of experience among the rotation players shrunk from seven to three-and-a-half.

The holdover, of course, was Lillard. His presence wasn’t enough for most media outlets to predict the Blazers would go .500, much less make the playoffs again. Another wave of doubters. Preceded by the ones who didn’t anticipate him being the Rookie of the Year. Those preceded skeptics who second-guessed the Blazers for taking a less-than-blazing point guard, already 22, from Weber State.

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In text messages and conversations with both friends and former coaches last summer, he vowed to prove the prognosticators wrong again, especially after meeting his new teammates in voluntary offseason workouts in San Diego, California. “We talked about the change coming this year right after that,” Rahe said. “‘I love my team,’ he told me. ‘They’re hungry and motivated with something to prove. I can lead these guys because they’re more like me.’ He’s the most mentally tough kid I’ve been around in 25 years of Division I basketball. When things get hardest, that’s when he gets comfortable.”

The result: The Blazers stunned the basketball world by not just making the playoffs but putting together the Western Conference’s fifth-best record, a mere seven wins off last year’s total—one game for every veteran free agent that went elsewhere (Aldridge, Wes Matthews, Arron Afflalo, Robin Lopez, Steve Blake, Alonzo Gee and Dorell Wright).   

Then they upset the fourth-seeded Los Angeles Clippers to reach the second round. Some would say it doesn’t qualify as an upset, since the Clippers lost their top two stars, Chris Paul and Blake Griffin, in the fourth game of their best-of-seven series. The Blazers will counter that they proved they could beat the Clippers at full strength in Game 3. Near the end of the regular season, several privately expressed to B/R confidence they could beat the Clippers if that’s who they faced.

The seeds of that attitude, in part, were planted last summer by you-know-who.

“We talked about it in August,” Damon Jones, one of Lillard’s AAU coaches with the Oakland Rebels, said. “He said, ‘We’re going to be fine.’ And I thought, ‘How are you going to be fine?’ But we both laughed about it just the other day. ‘What are the doubters saying now?’ he said. ‘They’re real quiet.'”

That Lillard considers this year’s squad “more” like him than last year’s team has to do with how the players are perceived more than their respective components. Both Portland rosters boast, or boasted, three undrafted players. Both have, or had, eight lottery picks.

Sources both inside and outside the team say the biggest change is the departure of Aldridge, who far and away had the longest tenure with the team but waffled on his allegiance as he approached free agency. He wanted to be treated as a leader but didn’t communicate like one, the sources add, forcing Lillard to sublimate his role. The loss of experience and proven talent, then, was made up for in allowing Lillard greater influence.

“In some ways, I think this year might’ve been easier for him than last year,” Matthews said. “Sharing the leadership duties was more of a learning curve. He’s used to being the leader, and they did a good job of putting players together that are good for their best player.”

Lillard readily acknowledges himself as the team’s leader and welcomes the responsibility that comes with it, but he steers clear of any praise for what his leadership has wrought.

“He doesn’t put himself above anyone or anything,” Blazers coach Terry Stotts said. “In good times and bad times, he’s always there. His teammates know he’s all about the right things.”

Ed Davis is one of the eight lottery picks on the current roster still hungry to secure his place in the league, the Blazers being his fourth stop since the Raptors drafted him 13th in 2010. The stars and team leaders he’d previously played with range from DeMar DeRozan to Zach Randolph and Marc Gasol to Kobe Bryant; Lillard stands apart from all of them because he’s never invoked his star privilege to distance himself from his teammates. 

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