Damian Lillard rode a heckler's taunting chants to a 34-point half against the Orlando Magic, as the Portland Trail Blazers guard drained shot after shot to silence him.
Lillard shared the experience during his post-game interview, recalling what was said to him after scoring only seven points in the first half.
“He just kept hollering my name,” Damial Lillard told NBC Sports NorthWest sideline reporter Brooke Olzendam after a 128-114 win. “‘Oh, he don't want to play tonight. He ain't that good.' The whole first half, he just wouldn't shut up. And I got tired of it. I told him at the end of the second quarter, ‘We're going to see.' And he kept on talking. And we saw.”
Dame later shared that he went back at the heckler after storming the Magic with a scoring barrage, one that proved to be the best scoring half in Blazers franchise history. Lillard hit 11 of his 15 shots, including 5-of-8 from deep to tally 41 for the night.
“He didn't have much to say (in the second half),” said Damian Lillard of the heckler, according to Joe Freeman of The Oregonian. “I think it was toward the end of the third quarter, I looked at him and I was tapping my ear, like, ‘I haven't heard you.' And he still didn't say nothing. So that took care of itself.”
His teammates shared the same sentiment.
“I don't know who was talking,” said forward Evan Turner. “But it didn't make any sense to me. He answered back. Guys like him always look for something to fuel them and he came out ultra-aggressive and had an amazing performance.”
Someone thought the heckler may have been wearing a turquoise shirt and sported a crew cut, but Lillard couldn't remember.
“I didn't look at his shirt,” said Lillard with full savagery. “I was looking at his eyes.
“At the end of the game, I said ‘What happened?'”
Surely the heckler had nothing else to say after packing that L on his way home.
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