Damian Lillard is one of the most respected players in the current NBA locker room. Despite he still doesn't have won an NBA Ring, the Oakland-born player has proved that he has the talent and skills to command a project in the league.
That's why, when the Portland Trail Blazers traded CJ McCollum, their project was at stake. Meaning, either Lillard led the team to at least a playoffs or he ended up being traded. However, as for now, the Blazers decided to kepp him and Jusuf Nurkic. Therefore, the Blazers' front office still believe in him.
However, when it was announced that Lillard undergone abdominal surgery, it was a shock to many. As not everyone knew what he was dealing with at the time, Lillard finally opened up about this difficult time for him. This is what he said.
Damian Lillard talks all about the physical toll taken on him last season
(Transcript via Sean Highkin of The Rose Garden Report)
"I didn't even realize how bad it was," Lillard said. "I had been dealing with it for four-and-a-half years, and it would get worse and worse, but I was still able to have 50 on a night and I could still move kind of well. And it would be after the game that I'd go home and there would be a bulge, like a baseball was under there. That type of swelling. And by the time I would wake up, it would go down, and the next day it would do it again. I was just fighting through it."
"I wanted to show people that I could do it anyway," Lillard told reporters at his camp last week. "I could struggle for however many games, but I’ll show you what I can do anyway. Even when it’s not going well, I could make it go well. So that was my pride. That’s my natural disposition, how I go about stuff. But I just wasn’t healthy."
"[Beckner] had told me before that night, and I was like, ‘I’m gonna show him, too,’" Lillard said. "And now that I’m here, I’m looking back at that same situation thinking, ‘I should have heard him out.’ But I wasn’t taking in what he was saying to me. ‘He’s trying to save me from not playing my best,’ is how I was looking at it. But I wasn’t taking in that he was like, ‘Dame, trust me, I’ve known you a long time and looked at you close for a long time.’ I damn near tuned out what he was saying and made him a part of the other group of people saying, ‘What’s going on?’
