Damian Lillard was supposed to be a Blazer for life but after 11 years with the franchise, he finally forced their hand by asking for a trade. The final straw for Lillard was the 2023 NBA Draft, which saw Portland draft young point guard Scoot Henderson.
“I remember telling management, ‘If we get the No. 1 pick and it’s Wemby, that’s fine, and if not, that pick is going to be a good asset to use, other teams are going to want it.’ But that wasn’t the route that took, and it didn’t make sense to me,” said Lillard on Behind the Bucks podcast.
By the end of Dame’s Portland tenure, the Trail Blazers already had a stacked backcourt, including players like Anfernee Simons and Shaedon Sharpe. So when he watched his team draft another guard in the draft, he knew it had crossed the point of no return.
“I remember watching the draft in Paris. It was very late, everyone was asleep except my father. We sat down to watch it on the couch. My dad didn’t want me to leave Portland. They pass pick one and two, it’s our turn, and he’s like ‘Look, they’re going to trade him now.’ They chose Scoot and I wasn’t set on leaving, but how do you start with Ant, Shaedon, Scoot, and me? If everything goes wrong, you’re going to transfer the 33-year-old.”
Lillard, a 9x All-Star, was the mascot for NBA longevity and an advocate for player loyalty. In the end, however, not even Dame was willing to stick around on a team that he had no faith in to win the title. He didn’t see the vision of the roster and felt betrayed that the Blazers would go younger despite his closing title window.
Today, Lillard is with the Bucks and he’s never had a better chance to win with a real co-star in Giannis Antetokounmpo. Still, Dame never wanted to leave the Trail Blazers, and had they made some different decisions, he might still be on the roster today.
Blazers Refused To Re-Sign LaMarcus Aldridge
Arguably the best stretch of Dame’s Portland era was during his partnership with LaMarcus Aldridge. From 2012 to 2015, the duo led Portland to a respectable place in the West and ranked among the best duos in the NBA. In his last season with the Blazers, Aldridge averaged 23.4 points, 10.2 rebounds, and 1.7 assists per game on 46.6% shooting.
Aldridge left the team to sign with the Spurs, but he tried to come back several times. Had he managed to reunite with Lillard and CJ McCollum, the Blazers might have made some noise in the West but Aldridge says that team shut down his attempts to return.
“It’s the first year I left and he’s like ‘You gotta come home.’ Hearing it from him and then going to San Antonio and experiencing it, at some point I did try to get back,” said Aldridge in a chat with Chris Haynes. “But Neil, the GM at the time didn’t want me back. I was calling, trying to get back, my agent was calling and he was like ‘Yeah they don’t want you back.’ So that was just confirming how I felt when I left, like Neil didn’t want me back like that.”
Aldridge was an elite power forward for Portland and he led them to the playoffs for years both before and during Lillard’s tenure. He could have made an ideal addition to the frontcourt during recent seasons but his return never panned out.
Instead, the Blazers bet on Lillard and CJ McCollum to lead them to glory, but they were only able to get so far. Without the star power or depth, the franchise was never able to compete with the best in the West, and they had to start over again with a brand new cast of young and developing players.
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