Damian Lillard's Perspective Has Shifted: 'I'm a Believer. I'm Optimistic'

After a rough preseason, Lillard still believes the Blazers are on the right track.

A few weeks ago on media day, Damian Lillard was the only person—player, coach or executive—who used the C-word. While Joe Cronin, Chauncey Billups and other players soft-pedaled expectations for the Trail Blazers' season and emphasized building a culture and identifying the players worth building around, Lillard spoke openly about wanting to win a championship.

That's been Lillard's goal his entire career. He still feels the Blazers are on the right track, or else he wouldn't have signed the extension he signed in July. What's shifted for Lillard is the year-to-year urgency that this has to be the season where it happens. And not in the way you think.

With Lillard turning 32 over the summer, time is running out for the Blazers to win it all while he's playing at the level he has over the past decade. But after missing most of last season recovering from a core muscle surgery, his first real break from basketball in years, he's finally accepted that these things can take time and not happen in a linear way.

"I think my perspective has just changed, just from taking a step back and not playing for so long, watching and having time away," Lillard said Thursday after the Blazers' first practice since completing an underwhelming 1-4 preseason showing. "I didn't come into the season saying, 'Oh, we're gonna win a championship. We have to win a championship.'"

What would happen, Lillard was then asked, if the Blazers finished this season in the play-in range, as most people project them to? Would he view that as a disappointment?

"I mean, that's not what I would want," he said. "But if that's what it is, then that's what it is. I'm not looking at it like, 'Oh, it's the end of the world that we're a play-in team.' I'm a believer. I'm optimistic. So in that situation, I would probably tell you that if we draw the right matchup and we're playing well at the right time, anything could happen."

They're not there yet. Not even close. Anyone who watched what happened this preseason can see that, for whatever the preseason is worth. (In my opinion, that's "not much but not nothing"). The defense still needs a lot of work. They're still figuring the offense out with so many new pieces. Talent-wise, there's a ceiling on this group that's well below the likes of Golden State and the Clippers, the true contenders in a Western Conference that's as deep as it's ever been.

The Blazers could be significantly better than they were last year, or even the past few years before that when they had a full team and were in the playoffs, and still be a play-in team simply because of how talented the rest of the competition is.

Or they could be much better than anyone expects, as Lillard still believes they can be.

"Nobody knew Boston was gonna be in the Finals [last season]," he said. "They weren't jumping out there saying it. They struggled for a little bit, they got to know each other, and they settled in with the new principles the new coaching staff had, and they started to click. They figured it out. They had that trust. When you have that, it's just a belief that's there."

That belief has sometimes taken until the All-Star break to build for teams Lillard has been on in the past. By then, the Blazers' roster could look much different than it does now. They still have no frontcourt depth, something Cronin has admitted and indicated he'd like to address by the end of the season, among other potential changes. The other C-word, the one Cronin and Billups have used liberally throughout camp, is "connectivity." That's something the Blazers don't have right now but Lillard thinks they can build.

"You don't just magically believe, 'We've got it this time,"' Lillard said. "You just feel that sense of togetherness. And when you get on the court together, you just feel every game like, 'We're gonna win.' I'm coming into this season just trying to work into the spirit of that. Trying to get to the point where we're comfortable on that level and we believe in each other on that level. We've got the talent, we've got the versatility, we just need to get to that point. And if we do, who knows what can happen?"

I found Lillard's response to a question about the Blazers' uncertain ownership situation in a recent story on The Ringer telling: “At this point in my career if there’s something I can’t control I ain’t wasting my time with it.”

Lillard and I are around the same age, and this is something I've also been thinking about a lot over the past few years. I've spent a lot of that time waiting for things to work out in my favor, whether that be jobs I was up for, stories I was working on and needed a certain interview for, or on a much greater scale, just waiting for the worst of the pandemic to be over.

As I'm sure it did for most of you, COVID completely changed my perspective and priorities. I did everything I could—got all the shots, was careful about who I was around and where I went, followed all the rules about masking, all of it. But I was just one person. I slowly realized I couldn't control what other people did, and I'd drive myself crazy worrying about it.

On the much smaller and less important level of the fortunes of a professional basketball team, that seems to be where Lillard's head is at going into his 11th season. He's controlled everything he can control. He agreed to have surgery to address the lingering abdominal issue, giving himself the best chance to prolong his prime well into his 30s. He signed an extension that keeps him under contract through the 2026-27 season, giving the Blazers assurances he isn't going anywhere and Cronin the runway to build a roster that makes sense around him. With the understanding that he isn't the general manager and can't actually decide these things, he still used some influence over roster moves, namely the trade for Jerami Grant that he pushed for.

It may all pay off with a championship before his career is over. It may not. But he's spent too much of his career stressing over things that are out of his control; now, he's just enjoying the ride and taking the long view.

As he put it on Thursday: "We're not gonna win nothing on opening night."