Damian Lillard Relishes Return of His Basketball Camp, Impacting Kids

Lillard's camp is back after a three-year COVID layoff.

BEAVERTON, Ore.—Damian Lillard has had a long break from playing basketball. He's had an even longer break from one of his other jobs: camp counselor.

On the second day of Lillard's youth basketball camp at the Beaverton YMCA on Wednesday, he took the microphone in front of a gym of a couple hundred elementary- and middle-school-aged kids to do a Q&A session with a doctor from camp sponsor MODA Health, answering questions about his own training regimen and excitement about the Trail Blazers' upcoming season.

While he was talking, a couple of boys sitting up front were carrying on their own whisper conversation, as kids that age who are easily distracted often do, even when an NBA superstar is talking to them. Lillard noticed.

"Y'all wanna talk?"

He walked over to the two kids, bent down and held the microphone to them.

"What are you guys talking about?"

"I have no idea," one of the kids responded.

"Alright," Lillard said. "The next time you want to talk while we're talking, you've got to get up here and do push-ups in front of everybody."

In that moment, Lillard was no different from any other adult charged with herding unruly kids, regardless of his hundreds of millions of dollars in the bank and dozens of NBA accolades to his name. It's a role he's grown to love, especially after a three-year break when putting on a basketball camp for kids was not possible because of the pandemic.

Unlike a lot of camps put on by NBA players that involve little more than a photo-op as far as involvement and investment, Lillard takes pride in actually showing up, staying the entire time and taking an active interest in the kids who signed up.

"I think in the beginning, it was, 'You're in the NBA, you're a popular player, you're supposed to have a camp,'" he told assembled reporters after he finished talking to his campers. "So I would just show up and they'd be like, 'You don't have to stay the whole time.' And I'm like, 'It's my camp. I should be here.'"

Some of Lillard's campers have grown up since they started coming. Now, he marvels that one of his kids, Isaac, who has been a participant every year with a prosthetic leg, is old enough to grow a mustache. The kids' parents are also realizing the impact Lillard is having.

"It used to be, parents would drop their kids off at 8:15 when camp starts at 9, because then they'd have the whole day," Lillard said. "But now, you see camp going on and parents are here watching, because they see what's being done. We're taking the time to invest in their kids. We're not just throwing the ball in the air saying, 'Do this move, shoot it and then get in the back of the line.'"

An avid boxing fan, Lillard incorporates some elements of self-defense into the drills and exercises he has his campers do. He also makes them dance (he joked that it was a "Soul Train line"), to bring some of the more shy kids out of their shells.

"The kids love being here," he said. "It's like a cheap daycare that the kids love to be at. They come out here and eat, they meet new friends, they dance a little bit, they watch me train. It's a fun time for them and it's a fun time for me, too.

"These kids don't forget," he said. "What you say to them, they remember. They feel a way about it and take it in. Since I learned that, I've focused more on, 'How can I impact them?'"

Lillard just signed a two-year extension that will keep him under contract in Portland for the next five years. Plenty of ink has been spilled on the bond he's created with the city since being drafted in 2012. He has kids of his own now. He has a Toyota dealership bearing his name. The camp is one of the other off-court, community-focused things he loves, especially after this long a layoff.

"The energy and innocence of kids," he said. "Being able to pour into them, [seeing] how excited they get when I come in, it feels good."