Trail Blazers superstar Damian Lillard said he has no problem with Kevin Durant’s decision to join a star-studded Golden State Warriors team even though Lillard himself would never follow those same footsteps according to Jim Rome.com.
“I’m never joining a team of stars.” Especially ones that won a championship and eliminated me. I just couldn’t see myself doing it. I would want to beat them.”
Lillard has also weighed in on the current national anthem protests debate and has a message to the people who tell athletes to ‘stick to sports’.
“Who is anybody to tell us we are lucky to be where we are? We earn this. Millions and millions of people as children, they want to be NBA players, they want to be in the NFL, they want to be in the Major Leagues and only a certain amount of people actually can get that done. Based off of a lot of hard work, a lot of time spent, a lot of what we have invested in this career. And we get to make it here because the decisions we made and time that we spent. So nobody can take that away from us. We did that.”
Lillard, an Oakland native takes pride in the hard work that’s gotten him two All-Star selections after he spent four years at Weber State. Although he’s happy that people recognize him for his basketball, Lillard feels that you don’t only have to excel at one thing in life.
“Nobody is telling people to work one job. If somebody has two jobs, they have those two jobs for a reason. So the same should go for us. You can’t tell us to only play basketball, don’t worry about anything else. Because our careers may last twelve years if you’re lucky to be Kobe Bryant twenty years, but some guys get three years on their rookie deal and they’re done. And when it doesn’t work out for them, then what? When you get hurt, then what? It’s unfair, but a lot of the people who say those things are people that are bitter—maybe about their own situation, which is also unfortunate. But we have the right to do whatever we please.”
Dame Lillard drops his second hip hop album this week under the alias Dame D.O.L.L.A.
