Trail Blazers star Damian Lillard recently spoke to play-by-play announcer Dave Pasch on his podcast, and the two covered a number of topics, with Lillard reiterating that he expects to spend the rest of his playing career in Portland.
“I do, I do,” he said. “I’ve had my share of people saying ‘Man, you got to get out of there! You’ve got to do this; you’ve got do to that.’ But I’m the type of person that I’m never going to be marching to the beat of nobody else’s drum. I’m gonna always do what I feel like is in my best interest and that I really feel in my heart. I’ve said this on many different occasions, they call it ‘He’s being loyal!’ and ‘Loyalty this, loyalty that’ and I’m like, I’m naturally a loyal person but I do have a level of loyalty to the organization.
“But this loyalty that they’re talking about is ultimately to who I am as a person. I’m being loyal to who I am and not getting beside myself because I’m somebody that, I believe what I believe. I think I can get it done. Now, everybody else might say ‘There’s no way the Blazers will ever win. They need to do this, they need to do that.’ But that’s just not how I feel about the situation. I feel like we’ll have a chance to win, I feel like that moment is going to come, I feel like that opportunity is going to come. And that’s that. As long as I feel that our organization is putting their best foot forward and we’re on the same page about doing everything we can do to win, then I’m willing to go out swinging…I would love to finish my career here and that’s my plan.”
Here are a few more of the most notable quotes from the Blazers’ star point guard:
On how he’s feeling now after abdominal surgery in January:
“I feel great. It had been about four-and-a-half years that I had been dealing with the abdominal injury. Obviously, toward the end it was much worse than when I first started to experience it…It just reached the point where it was unbearable. Had I known the significance of the injury two, three years ago, I would have done what I had to do to handle it then, but I just didn’t know what was going on. I didn’t know it was a situation where I needed surgery.”
On Portland’s revamped roster entering 2022/23:
“We’ve got a lot of guys, that, we have the makings of being a good team. Whether or not we’re going to be a great team, things have to go well. You need some favor, you need a little bit of luck. And you’ve just got to be a team that’s not fun to play against. We’re going to have to grind it out and go take stuff. But I love where we are right now. In this moment, I love where we are.”
On players whose games Lillard admires and would love to play with:
“Well, one of those players was Jerami Grant…and we got him…Without saying star players’ names, because obviously there’s a bunch of stars I would love to play with…If I had to say a player right now who I would want to add to our team, I would say somebody like Mikal Bridges, or OG Anunoby, or Jarred Vanderbilt, somebody like that. One of those three. I love those three guys…They defend, they all have really good size, they can make shots…They’re tough, they’re competitive.”