As teams like the Lakers and Suns climb up the Western Conference standings, the Portland Trail Blazers are heading in the opposite direction after a promising start to the season.
After going 10-4 in their first 14 games, the Blazers are now 4 games under .500 and on the outside looking in on the play-in tournament. For NBA superstar Damian Lillard, this is obviously not where he wanted his team to be at this point in the season, and he made sure to let reporters know that he expects something to change between now and October.
“I definitely can understand what the plan is,” Lillard told Chris Mannix of Sports Illustrated. “Me and Joe, one thing we do have is transparency. He knows what I want. I want to win. I want to win in Portland, and he’s expressed the same to me. He’s told me, ‘We want to give you every opportunity to win.’ But there comes a time where we have the right intentions, [but] we’ve got to execute. We have to actually make that come to life, to give ourselves a chance to really make a run at it. And because of who I know him to be, I trust him on that. I don’t ever think he would tell me one thing and then not do it. If anything, it would just be like, ‘We did our best and we couldn’t do it.’”
The Blazers have been mostly good in the Dame era, with guys like CJ McCollum, Jusuf Nurkic, and LaMarcus Aldridge standing out as some of his best teammates over the years.
Unfortunately, the Blazers haven’t yet landed a true co-star for Dame since LMA’s departure, and it’s hard to see them making any ground in the West until they find one.
Could Dame Leave The Blazers This Offseason?
If Portland misses the playoffs and losses key contributors like Jerami Grant without getting anyone to replace them, where does it leave Portland? In that scenario, it would make sense for Lillard to finally ask for a trade and go somewhere he might be able to win.
But we know how loyal Dame is, and he has committed to sticking around and getting it done in Portland, even if it means missing out on an “easy” ring somewhere else.
You might not love that mentality for one of the game’s all-time great players, but you have to respect it — especially if he somehow pulls off the impossible and wins a ring with the Blazers.
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