After Damian Lillard returned to the Portland Trail Blazers, Chauncey Billups jokingly referred to him as "the highest-paid assistant coach in history." Well, it turns out Billups may have had an ace up his sleeve, coaching the Blazers for just one game before being placed on immediate leave amid federal indictments.
Unexpectedly losing your head coach that early into the season under those circumstances risks disaster for any team, but especially a young Blazers roster coming off a 36-win season. That adversity makes Lillard's veteran presence more important than ever before as he helps Portland navigate the remainder of the season.
Damian Lillard's veteran leadership is more important than ever
He may not have specific experience with this unprecedented situation, but since the Weber State product entered the league in 2012, he's become familiar with enduring the highs and lows that inevitably come throughout the course of a season.
In a piece recently published by Jason Quick of The Athletic, Lillard provided a veteran mindset to keep things in perspective for a Blazers team that has not only lost their head coach but also lost six of their last seven games (this was before they defeated the Golden State Warriors on the road).
“I told these dudes: this is the time when you find your true identity,” Lillard said. “It’s not when you win a couple games and everything feels good. It’s in the moments when it would be easy to walk away — like now, we have some injuries, a rough patch, a tough schedule — but this is the time when you make a decision to march forward and up.”
Lillard emphasized that it doesn't matter what external pressure is placed on their injury-plagued team during these struggles; instead, it's about maintaining a mindset that doesn't let this adversity break you as a player or as a collective.
“Hey, we might lose five more games, but what matters is not what we say to the media,” Lillard said. “it’s how we walk into the locker room and talk to each other, or whether we get to practice and it’s quiet and nobody says anything … like, you gotta have that feeling of ‘Man, this sucks.’ But you have to have the actions of ‘this is not breaking me.’
“Delivering that messaging, that experience, is kind of my position on this team,” Lillard added. “And their position is to experience it and know that my perspective doesn’t come from ‘I think’ … It comes from ‘I did it.’”
Part of the reason the Blazers have been shorthanded this season is that they added Lillard to their 15-man roster, a player with no expectations of playing in the 2025-26 season. Although Portland couldn't have foreseen injuries piling up to this extent early on, they still shouldn't regret using a roster spot on an aging star like Lillard.
Dame currently has a unique role on Portland's roster that lies between player and coach. With Anfernee Simons now in Boston, Lillard is also the only one on the roster who has endured the entire Blazers experience from playoff runs to teardown. That perspective was already valuable, but with Billups surprisingly out of the picture and Tiago Splitter now thrown into the fire after just one game, Lillard's steady, calming veteran presence has become essential.