Portland Trail Blazers star guard Damian Lillard sat down to talk about the early parts of his career on his YouTube channel in the first episode of his “License to Lillard 2025” series. The discussed topics included Portland’s dramatic series win over the Houston Rockets in 2014 and LaMarcus Aldridge’s decision to leave the Blazers in free agency in 2015.
Lillard talked about his famous shot to send Houston home in 2014 that came with 0.9 seconds remaining in the game:
In that moment I wasn’t thinking,
‘If we lose, we’re going to game seven.’ I’m just thinking, ‘There’s 0.9 seconds, we down two, I’m going for it.’
This is one of those times where [Head Coach Terry Stotts] is going for the safe route. Like, let’s just clear everybody out, let’s lob it to LA and let’s go to overtime. And I’m thinking to myself, it just wasn’t sitting right with me, like, ‘Man, what if the pass don’t get there?’
I see the referee hand him the ball, and I just took off.
Lillard talked about driving home from the game and seeing the reactions of fans in Portland and on social media celebrating the game-winner. He also mentioned that moment as the first “Dame Time” moment.
That’s when it went from, ‘Oh he can do this,’ to I think people who watch NBA basketball started to just expect me to do it all the time.
After the 2015 NBA season where an injured Blazers lost to the Memphis Grizzlies in the first round, Aldridge left Portland to sign with the San Antonio Spurs. Lillard talked about the confusion between him, Aldridge and the front office leading to Aldridge’s departure.
Lillard went on to mention that with hindsight, he believes the Blazers were on a championship path if Aldridge stayed — a claim he has made before about that iteration of the team.
I felt like in the next one or two years we would’ve won it.
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, just had a lot of injuries.
I feel like if we come back like that and now we’re a year more experienced, and a year better, we would’ve been even better. I feel like within those next two years, we would’ve won it for sure. I feel like we would’ve won a championship.
You can watch the full first episode of “License to Lillard 2025” here.
