A trip to Sacramento in the late 1980s or early 1990s didn’t have much to offer. Except you’d see Mitch Richmond at work.
I can’t say I enjoyed going to Market Square Arena in Indianapolis back then. Unless you could watch Reggie Miller zipping around the field like a pinball machine in your favorite slot machine, bouncing wildly off bumpers and racking up points.
Minneapolis? KG. ‘Nuff said.
A trip to San Antonio before Tim Duncan meant a lot of David Robinson, “The Admiral”. Dallas was Ro Blackman’s city. Utah was Stockton to Malone.
At just about every NBA outpost there was a star, and the occasional superstar, worth watching.
That was long before League Pass and RSNs brought every team and player to your big screen, iPad or laptop. Times are different now. The NBA is more intimate and accessible to millions.
So you can follow every Damian Lillard vs Portland home and away game with one click. And with another click you can read or hear all the machinations about Lillard’s future there.
If you’ve been doing this lately, you might get overwhelmed by the soap opera’s annual back-and-forth about whether Dame will stay in the rose city or finally ask for a trade. And they found out in real time last week that the Blazers didn’t move the No. 3, as Lillard had urged them to look for a veteran or veterans to help him get a foothold in the Western Conference next season .
Not only did Portland keep the pick, but they also needed Lillard’s eventual replacement in Scoot Henderson, the talented and precocious 19-year-old from the G League Ignite.
The Blazers and their 32-year-old face of the franchise met Monday. General Manager Joe Cronin called it a “great discussion” and reiterated that the Blazers are committed to building a winning team around the seven-time All-Star. Collective eyes rolled at the PDX. Emotions there are undiminished, especially with a fan base that ranks among the best in the league.
Is it too much for me to hope for a miracle that Dame stays in Oregon?
Not out of dislike for the Miami Heat, the Brooklyn Nets, or any other team linked to Lillard in trade talks. Miami is an exemplary franchise that more teams should emulate. Brooklyn has one of Lillard’s best NBA friends in Mikal Bridges; Miami has another in Bam Adebayo.
But what makes the federation such a powerful draw is the fact that you can walk into any arena any night and almost always see someone performing their craft at the highest level. And that’s why it’s important that people in Portland have the same access to greatness that people in LA, New York or Miami have.
Henderson believes that one day, maybe soon, he will be a great player in the NBA.
Of course, Lillard is great.
One can now argue that the best move for Portland is to trade Lillard and surround Henderson with as many good players as possible early in his career. I cannot and will not dispute this point. I ask: would Henderson, Anfernee Simons, Shaedon Sharpe, Nassir Little and things like Tyler Herro, Duncan Robinson and many future first-round picks from Miami be any better? (Some in the league believe an unleashed Simons – free from Lillard – could do major damage alongside Henderson.)
But someone has to support Lillard’s main reasons why he wants to stay and try to win in the 503s and 971s.
Someone has to stand up for loyalty. Blind, stupid, wonderful loyalty. It’s a trait that’s being lost on far too many these days who don’t deserve it, who treat it like a disposable currency, something social media ridicules rather than celebrates.
Yes, Lillard has made a lot of money over the years and made every penny.
As of his 2012-13 rookie season, the Blazers ranked 14th in the league with 462 wins, according to StatMuse. But among the teams that haven’t won a title in that span, Portland…is in eighth place, behind the Clippers, Celtics (remember, since 2012-13), Oklahoma City, Memphis, Utah, Houston and Indiana. He was more loyal to Portland than Portland – the team, not the city – deserved. Have Blazers fans made their living watching him over the years? I can’t answer that for you, but I guess in which direction I think the predominance of the fan base would develop.
Lillard has played with multiple coaches, multiple GMs, and hiring managers. The one constant in Portland is the ownership that remains with the Allen family, with Jody Allen in control of the team since her brother Paul, the Microsoft co-founder and billionaire, died of cancer in 2018. But nothing has gotten that much better during Lillard’s 11 years there.
LaMarcus Aldridge and CJ McCollum were the best of the myriad teammates the Blazers have surrounded Lillard with. Role players have come and gone, from Al-Farouq Aminu to Evan Turner; Wesley Matthews to Maurice Harkless; Zach Collins to Jusuf Nurkic. None of these players reached Lillard’s level. McCollum was sent to New Orleans in 2022 on a multiplayer contract. Now it’s Simons, Sharpe and Little that Lillard is waiting for to shine.
But Lillard never gave up. He’s delved more into the issue in recent years, but he’s never instructed his camp to leak what he wants out.
We get Garnett vibes from Dame. Like Lillard, Garnett and his team reached only one conference final in 2004. Lillard has played all eleven seasons at Portland; Garnett played his first 12 years with the Timberwolves before accepting a move to the Celtics in 2007 with Seattle’s Ray Allen. And while he hoped and expected that Timberwolves management would improve the dressing room around him, KG wasn’t going to beg anyone to play with him in “cold, cold Minnesota,” as he often put it.
“I’m not the type to fly someone out here and take them to a baseball game, even though I know I haven’t done a Twins game. In the six years I’ve been here I’ve probably done two Twins games. You know, I’ll take you to the park and push you on a swing. That’s not me,” Garnett told me about halfway through his debut stint with Wolves.
But Garnett kept driving that momentum forward. As in Portland, free agents did not flock to the Twin Cities. The only Wolves team to reach the conference finals made it after then-GM Kevin McHale took over in 2003 from Milwaukee’s Sam Cassell and Latrell Sprewell from the Knicks to help KG near the summit.
Likewise, Lillard hasn’t convinced anyone of importance to play with him, leaving that to the front office. In that sense, Lillard has made it clear that he would have been content if he had picked Draymond Green as No. 3, for example. But Green is almost certain to return to the Warriors, and none of the other free-agent forwards bring Green’s “I don’t need to shoot to dominate” pedigree. (Kyle Kuzma, a very talented player, wouldn’t make it. As mentioned above, the Blazers already have plenty of offensive mouths to feed.) So despite the supposed bonhomie of Monday’s meeting, we’re still where we’ve always been at Lillard: He wants better teammates and the Blazers say, “Trust us.”
Blazers beat writer Jason Quick wrote a great article earlier this week detailing how patience might be the key to getting everyone what they want, and there’s a parallel to Lillard’s current path, like the Pacers rebuilt their team around Miller during his 18-year career.
The Pacers’ first playoffs in the late ’80s revolved around Miller and Chuck Person. Gradually, Indy leaned more on feeder center Rik Smits — picked by the No. 2 in 1988 — as Indiana got a rare chance to get into the top five. The Pacers then got tough, adding Dale Davis and Antonio Davis to their front apron to surround the 7-foot-4 smits.
In 1994, the Pacers were in the finals of the Eastern Conference. But it took more tweaks — the return of Mark Jackson, the addition of Jalen Rose and Sam Perkins, the hiring of Larry Brown and then Larry Bird as head coach — to put the Pacers back at the top.
Finally, between 1998 and 2000, Indy reached the conference finals three times in a row and managed to advance to the franchise’s first NBA Finals on the third time. But that required undue patience from Miller, who never asked out; by Donnie Walsh, General Manager of the Hall of Fame, and by the ownership that enabled Walsh to take the steps he wanted.
And now the Blazers’ Cronin says he still has work to do to improve the roster starting Friday. Portland’s young non-scoot players certainly have commercial value. Henderson is a superstar. But I have my doubts that Cronin can turn those assets into the star that Lillard believes could reshape the game. We’ll know in about a week.
But it’s not like Dame will stick around and move to Oakland if the Blazers don’t make the big move or don’t make it. He will jump.
So is watching Lillard at work in Portland while teaching the man who will eventually take his key card how to beat a doubles team is the worst result for the 2023/24 season? Teach him the fastest route through local traffic, the best post-game restaurant, and how you can help a city love you like Portland loved him?
Show with words and deeds that loyalty is not a swear word.
(Photo by Damian Lillard: Sam Forencich/NBAE via Getty Images)