Portland Trail Blazers superstar Damian Lillard has never been afraid to speak his mind. He's an open book, and due to that, people tend to form opinions on him. The guard spoke more on his legacy, beliefs in basketball, and life after the sport with Yaron Weitzman of Bleacher Report.
Lillard has been one of the best guards in basketball over the last few seasons. He has always been open about wanting a championship, and it's hard not to regard him as a team player focused on winning.
However, he acknowledges that there are more important things in life:
“It's about championships, that's why I play. It's just that there's other stuff in life that's more important,” he says.
In other words, don't mistake perspective for indifference.
“I'm comfortable enough with myself I don't have to prove to anybody that I want to win a championship, I know that in my heart,” he adds. “But when I'm done playing and five years go by, they're not going to be talking about me; they're going to be talking about the next dude that's averaging 25.”
It's kind of a sad way to look at it, but it's true. Once you retire, you might be talked about on occasion, especially when someone does something comparable to you. However, you won't be bringing anything new to the table for them in terms of play. Therefore, it's the current players that people will care about.
Lillard sums it up like this:
So instead, he tries to think ahead, to his future wedding, or 50th birthday party, about the people who will be there, about what they might say. “The people who dealt with me, the people who will be talking about me, they're going to remember the kind of person I was,” Lillard says. “That I didn't let the game swallow me up and make me say, ‘All right, I'm just going to jump ship and go somewhere else to win a championship.'” If he did that, he says, he has a feeling the Blazers would tear the whole thing down: “And now this guy gets moved to a team that might not value him, and this guy isn't re-signed, and now he may never get a job again.”
It's refreshing to see this point of view from a player. Lillard wants to be in Portland. He wants to win an NBA championship. He won't let it completely consume him, though.
Lillard realizes that once he retires he won't be making daily headlines anymore. He needs to have a life outside of basketball. As of right now, he seems to be balancing everything pretty well.
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