Report: Portland Trailblazer’s Damian Lillard chose loyalty over LeBron James and Anthony Davis. Did Lillard make a mistake?
LeBron James and Anthony Davis tried to recruit Damian Lillard before Russell Westbrook.
During the 2021 NBA off-season, Damian Lillard was invited to join a lunch with LeBron James and Anthony Davis in Los Angeles. While Lillard was entering this lunch still as a Blazer, he described this meeting as not a recruitment to the Los Angeles Lakers but, more so, a proposal of what the Lakers could provide for Lillard.
Since being drafted in the NBA, Lillard has only played for the Portland Trailblazers. During his time with the Blazers, he has been a 6x All-Star, 6x All-NBA player, rookie of the year and most recently, named a top 75 player of All-time! Lillard will go down as one of the greatest point guards in NBA history to never win a championship if he stays in Portland. For years, the Blazers have tried and failed to build a competent team around Lillard.
After being eliminated in the first round of the 2021 playoffs while being the favourite to win the series, Lillard reached his peak of tolerance and made it clear to the organization that he would request a trade if they failed him one more time. While he was still loyal to the franchise, Lillard was scouting across the league to see which teams he would be interested in joining if the Blazers failed to build anything around him. During this period, a story by Yahoo Sports was released about LeBron James and Anthony Davis describing what the future could look like if Lillard joined their conquest of winning a championship.
According to an interview with Chris Haynes of Yahoo Sports and Damian Lillard that occurred during the off-season, it was revealed that James and Davis were looking to convince Lillard to request a trade to the Lakers. Even though Lillard mentioned that his lunch with James and Davis was not a requirement, Lillard was looking for insight into where his next chapter could be in the NBA if the Blazers failed him one last time.
During Haynes’s interview with Lillard, it was revealed that all Lillard wants is to be in a position where he can win an NBA championship. Lillard understood that teaming up with James and Davis could grant him his ultimate dream but, at what cost. One of the reasons Lillard has yet to even request a trade is due to how much he loves and appreciates the city of Portland and its franchise. Here is what Lillard had to say when it came to him processing the idea of not starting the 2021-22 season as a Blazer.
Note: Quotes are from basketball.realgm.com.
“When I was like, ‘Man, what if I’m not back in Portland?’ When I actually had that thought, it just runs so deep with me to win here,” Lillard told Yahoo Sports. “I want to win here. I’ve attached myself to the history of this organization and this city. Just thinking about how long it’s been since they’ve won, I want to be a part of that coming to an end. I want people to say, ‘When Dame came through here, he rode all the way out for us through the good and the bad. He was ready to sink with the ship.’
“When I think about how I want the people around me to be like, I try to be that as a Trail Blazer. It’s not always going to be peaches and cream. It’s not always going to look good. You’re not going to get the praise. It’s a small market. You’re going to miss out on certain things. S***, you may never win. But if I did decide to go do something else, there’s also no guarantee that I’m going to win it by moving on.
“So, my best bet is to stick to my guns and do what I care about in my heart. Now, if I was to move on and I get there and it doesn’t work out and then they decide to blow it up, and now I’m a part of a deal going somewhere else. You look at some of the dudes around the league that were at the top of their game and they made one move and now they’re on this team, next year on another team and now they’re somewhere completely different. As much as I want to win, I want to do it my way.”
Damian Lillard’s loyalty is unmatched. The love that he has for the Portland Trailblazers clearly goes beyond money and fame. While all of this is extremely noble by the former All-Star, the harsh reality is that the Blazers lack the assets and salary to make significant changes to their roster in hopes of winning a championship. Even if they trade McCollum for either an All-Star caliber player or expiring contracts to free the salary-cap. Portland is a small market organization and will most likely fail to bring a superstar alongside Lillard. The proof of this is the last few seasons of Lillard’s career in Portland. The best the Blazers could do was to bring Carmelo Anthony and Robert Covington to the organization, which is not enough to win a championship.
Lillard’s loyalty will end up ruining his chance of joining LeBron James and Anthony Davis in the off-season. With Russell Westbrook being the superstar point guard to join the Lakers, Lillard's opportunity of winning a championship has significantly decreased, at least for this season. The only way Lillard could win a championship is if the Brooklyn Nets trade Kyrie Irving for Lillard, which is highly unlikely. The worst part about this story is that Lillard would have been a better fit for the Lakers than Russell Westbrook.
