Damian Lillard nonchalantly turned down the noise surrounding his rivalry with Russell Westbrook, now that the Portland Trail Blazers are set to face the Houston Rockets on Monday.
Lillard ensured to send Westbrook's Oklahoma City Thunder home in Game 5 of the first round of the playoffs, waving goodbye to Paul George and the rest of his opponents as he buried a cold-blooded 3-pointer at the buzzer to give him 50 points for the night.
Westbrook, always game to prove he's better than his competition, took to guarding Lillard for most of their encounters in the regular season — a trend that soon developed into a war in the playoffs. While Lillard largely outplayed the triple-double king in the postseason, he argues why there is not much to their beef:
“Neither one of us won the championship,” Lillard told Casey Holdahl of Blazers.com.
Lillard was resented by some NBA players who deemed him unfit of making the 2018 All-NBA First Team. Westbrook was bumped down to the Second Team, despite averaging a triple-double for a second straight season.
The two have always been fond of going full throttle against each other, and that's unlikely to change now — even if Westbrook has switched jerseys. But Lillard is unlikely to make a spectacle out of this matchup, considering the Blazers have much more than a personal rivalry at stake.
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