LaMarcus Aldridge left the Portland Trail Blazers in 2015 free agency to join the San Antonio Spurs. Damian Lillard recently revealed that this was largely due to a miscommunication.
"It took for us to be on different teams for four years for me to talk to him," Lillard said in Episode 1 of his License to Lillard YouTube series. "Man, it was really just other people saying stuff. I was just like, 'Bro, I never really cared about whose team it is, or whose city it is, or none of that. I was trying to be the best complement to you.'"
Did miscommunication cost the Blazers a championship?
The Blazers had just come off a 51-win season that resulted in a first-round playoff exit at the hands of the Memphis Grizzlies. Their roster was even better than their record indicated, as Portland dealt with significant injuries throughout the season. Lillard was already a two-time All-Star and continually improving at 24 years old, swiftly catching up to the timeline of Aldridge's prime.
With a young roster set to get better and healthier, things were trending upwards for Portland. Had Aldridge decided to stay, Lillard thought the Blazers would've won it all in the coming seasons.
"I felt like, in the next one or two years, we would have won it. 'Cause we were one of the best teams my second year -- just inexperienced. We were one of the best teams for a long time. My third year, we just had a lot of injuries, like major injuries. I feel like that fourth year would have been a good year," Lillard said.
Aldridge previously revealed in a Damian Lillard docuseries, "The Damian Lillard Story," that he tried returning to Portland multiple times after his departure. However, Neil Olshey, the Blazers general manager at the time, didn't seem open to the idea of a reunion.
"At some point, I did try to get back, but Neil [Olshey], the GM at the time, didn't want me back," Aldridge said. "I was calling, trying to get back, and my agent was calling. He was like, 'They don't want you back.' That was confirming how I felt when I left. Neil really didn't want me back, and he confirmed it when I tried to come back two or three times throughout my career. He never let it happen."
With Brandon Roy, Greg Oden, and then Lillard, the Blazers were never just Aldridge's team. There were reports that Aldridge "felt underappreciated -- if not disrespected" during his Blazers tenure, which explains why he left despite the team's relative success. That made it confusing as to why he'd want to come back to a franchise that he felt disrespected him. However, Lillard's new perspective, revealing that this was primarily due to a miscommunication, makes it clearer why Aldridge finally wanted to come back.
While we still don't know the whole story, from a Blazers fan's perspective, it would've been great if Olshey were open to a reunion to let the two All-Stars finish what they started.