The eyes of the basketball world are on the NBA Finals between the Milwaukee Bucks and the Phoenix Suns. But for a brief moment on Friday, those eyes turned to Portland, as Damian Lillard’s future with the franchise once again came into question. This time, a report popped up from Henry Abbott of TrueHoop indicating that Lillard has plans to request a trade sometime in the coming days.
Whether or not that is true remains to be seen — Lillard will apparently speak to the media later on Friday afternoon — but in a new piece from Chris Haynes of Yahoo Sports, Lillard spoke about the upcoming offseason and explained why it’s such a big one, both for himself and the Portland Trail Blazers.
“I think that’s the stage we’re at as a team where we all, not just me, not just my teammates, not just our new coaching staff, the front office, everybody in this organization must look in the mirror because we’ve constantly come up short,” Lillard said. “We have to look in the mirror and say I have to be better because whatever it is we’re doing is not working and it’s not giving us the shot to compete on the level that we want to compete on.”
Lillard then explained that as he’s getting older, he understands that time is running out on him to win a championship, and that he believes accountability on all levels is becoming increasingly important in Portland.
There are few reasons: One being I’m not getting any younger. Our environment has always been great. We’re not losing a lot, but we were eliminated by a shorthanded Denver team that I felt we should have beat. I just walked away from that really disappointed. I was like, ‘Man, this just isn’t going to work.’ We’re not winning the championship, but we’ve got a successful organization. We’re not a franchise that’s just out here losing every year and getting divided. We have positive seasons; we just don’t end up with a championship. So I feel like at this point, I basically made the decision that if you do what you’ve always done, you’ll always be where you’ve always been. Just like I hold myself accountable for a bad performance or hold myself accountable to make sure that I work my ass off when I’m training, I must be accountable for saying what needs to be said even if it’s not popular. And that just comes with age. When I was younger, I felt like maybe I’ll be out of place, but I feel like I’ve earned the right to say we must do better. We must do better if we want to win on that level.
While Lillard’s usually been pretty open about whatever’s on his mind at a given time, it does seem like he’s been more willing than ever to talk about what’s going on in Portland and how his aspirations of winning a championship are front of mind. Whether or not that leads to a trade request or a departure from the Blazers remains to be seen, but regardless, it’s evident the Blazers are at a crossroad this summer.
