Damian Lillard keeps talking about Milwaukee

Damian Lillard keeps talking about Milwaukee

So Damen Lillard has been talking about how hard it was for him in Milwaukee. You know, he hasn’t thanked Milwaukee for, you know, the fan support or anything, but he has been talking about how tough it was for him in Milwaukee and how happy is to be back in Portland. And he talked about the story with his daughters, you know, saying, “Hey, Dad, we don’t have to go on a plane anymore.” And there’s some like sympathy I could have for this here, but at the end of the day, I’m seeing everybody just buying into this and completely just being on the side of Dame being the victim. And personally, I’m going to get into why I think that this is a little bit of a spin from Dame and a little bit of manipulation. Not going to lie. And I’m going to get into my reasons why. Before I get into get into all that, I’m gonna make this clear. I don’t have hate for Dame. As much as some Dame fans are going to take over the comment section and they’re gonna say this and that, I’m sure. I don’t he was one of my top five favorite players that weren’t a Buck before he came to the Bucks, I always liked Dame. Um I was so excited about the Dame trade. I thought it was a great move from Hor and that’s one of the few things I don’t get on horse for because at the time I thought it was a good decision. And there’s a lot of reasons that it didn’t work out that I’ve talked about in the last couple years um as reasons why things were not working. Um the other moves that John Horse made u not bringing in defense when they lost Drew Holiday and brought in Dame. They also lost Jiovon Carter and replaced him with campaign which is just pure offense. They put Beasley next to him pure offense rather than bringing defense. There were a lot of problems. the probably I would say the majority of the issues last not I would say the majority of the issues last two years were not Damen Lillard’s fault but the narrative out there I’m seeing right now is Damen Lord was a victim and like a blameless victim in this and I just I’ve got to push back against this Saab story and all this spin from Dame Lord in his camp and I’m going to start this off by just saying I think we need to change the way we view superstars a little bit in today’s NBA when you look at the fact that Dame is approaching being a billionaire. I mean, he’s made over $450 million just from his NBA contracts. And when you look at his Adidas contracts, the second one is a lifetime contract from last year. I don’t see any reported number on it, but his 2014 contract was worth $100 million. I would assume a lifetime contract is probably at least $200 million. So, if that’s around at least a ballpark, that would mean he’s made $750 million just from the NBA in Adidas. When you consider investments and other endorsement deals from different companies, he’s probably at least approaching a billion dollars. This guy, we’re like, we’re talking about basically a billionaire here. And that doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be any sympathy or that he doesn’t deserve that money. He absolutely does. And I think that NBA players should be getting this type of money. But it does mean that when you hear this type of story, it’s not the same thing as if you or I have to move from Milwaukee to Portland or Portland to Milwaukee and our kids are in the other place. It’s like he has the money. He has all the money that you could possibly want to make this as easy as it could be. Whether it’s private jets, whether it’s having multiple houses, it’s not that it’s not a tough situation. It’s that this is not something where it’s like, “Oh my goodness, this is such a huge issue in his life that we can’t like expect him to be at his top form basketball-wise.” Like, no. When you’re getting paid $60 million a year from your team and you’re getting that type of endorsement money, I’m sorry. That is something that is not We should be able to expect you to overcome something like this as a fan. It’s not that this isn’t nothing. It’s that as a basketball fan, I think that when you’re getting paid that type of money, this isn’t something enough to say we can’t criticize you as a basketball player. We can’t criticize you um the stuff that you do. And the biggest thing with this, the biggest reason why it’s not that he’s making all that money, that’s a small part of it. But the biggest thing is we all know he requested or demanded to leave Portland, right? But another thing that’s be being just thrown out the window in all this is he at least accepted coming to Milwaukee. He’s doing this PR spin because as a guy that is one of the richest players in NBA history, he has all the media connections. Chris Haynes is like his best friend. And so he’s able to spin all these narratives, but he’s come out and said he had the chance to approve the trade and he’s putting it on his agent because nobody has accountability anymore. But your agent works for you. And you saying this is basically saying you had the chance to approve approve the trade or deny it. And he’s saying he was going to deny it, but his agent convinced him. But you’re a grown man. You’re a 35 at that time. What 34 35? I think 34 year old man. Maybe it was 33. I’m getting the numbers mixed up. Either way, you’re in your 30s and you were a able to be convinced by the person that works for you to go to the Bucks. Either way, it’s not like a um a so story terrible place to go. Like it was basketball was a great situation and you wanted out of Portland. It’s not like Miami was so close to Portland. That’s where you wanted to go. But you’re trying to make this about it was so hard for your family when you demanded to leave your family to go even further to Miami. So it feels like to me he’s just finding any way he can to spin the problems that were in Milwaukee. And I don’t think he has to spend the pounds in Milwaukee for the most part. I think there were a couple parts you could just say, you know what, I have a couple regrets for my time. I could have done better here. I could have done better there. And thank you Milwaukee for your time. I wish it worked better. Then boom, there’s nothing to talk about. But the problem is with Damen Lillard right here and is that he’s just spinning the narrative in any way that works and everybody is just uncritically eating it up and I’ve just got to address these things a little bit. Again, the majority of the problems weren’t on him. But there were some things that were that we need to talk about that I’m not just going to let be thrown away because he said, “Oh, I missed my kids.” Even though I demanded to leave where my kids were, and I requested to go even further than um Milwaukee. I wanted to go even further away from my kids. But now that it didn’t work out, I’m going to keep telling you about how hard it was for my kids. I don’t know about that. I’m not gonna you use that as an excuse basketball-wise to just throw away stuff like this where he’s talked he admitted coming in out of shape the first year. This isn’t the only reason the first year fell apart, but this is a real thing. Being scared of getting hurt is not enough of an excuse to come in out of shape. Guys get traded in the NBA. You can’t just say, you know what, I’m not going to be my best self for my next team because I don’t want to get hurt this off season. You could say, you know what, uh, maybe like the first couple weeks I’ll be a little bit out of game shape because I’m not running scrimmages like I normally do. But that’s not what he’s saying. He’s saying that he was told Doc Rivers was told um he did some light running and he did some shooting with no one in the gym. Like that’s not that’s not acceptable because you’re afraid of getting hurt. That’s a ridiculous thing to say because like you could always get hurt and if you wanted to lower the chances, sure, there’s a level of where you could say, “Yeah, I’m going to take it easy on scrimmaging, but you can’t just say, “Oh, I’m just going to do light running this off season because I’m scared of getting hurt.” Like, no, you need to come in and be a professional athlete level of shape. And he wasn’t. We saw his first year. He came in a little puffy, a little bit a little bit chunkier than normal. And he played even worse defense than he normally played his first year. And that wasn’t the only issue. Like I’ve said a million times, campaign and Malik Beasley being the only backcourt mates was a big issue. They should have made sure they found a way to get a backcourt defender before the season. That was another John Horse failure. But a part of the reason that Doc Rivers ended up getting hired and Adrien Griffin was fired. One of the reasons was Damen Lord was so so bad as a point of attack defender that the defense was not good and they felt like they needed to make a change. That was the only problem with the defense. Brook Lopez and Bobby Poris being unable to run the scheme that Adrien Griffin wanted to run was arguably as big of a piece. The Malik Beasley and campaign defensive defense was arguably as big of a piece. But Damen Lillard being out of shape was a factor in the first year’s failure. It just was. It was a part of the problem. And it’s just it’s not that I’m trying to blame Damy Wood for everything. It’s that rather than just say, “Oh, poor victim dame.” Just come out and say, “You know what? It didn’t go it didn’t go how I wanted. I I wish I had done a couple things better. I wish him different things had happened. You know, thank you for your time.” But instead of that, we’re getting all this like, “Oh, he was a warrior. He was a trooper. He did everything he could.” No, he didn’t. There were things he should have done better. And another thing was um year one I think yeah there’s a good chunk of blame that goes on Dame Lord. Not the majority there’s a good chunk um when you look at the defense that came from him being out of shape. And then you look at the fact that um that he ended up getting hurt. I mean when you come in out of shape you’re going to be more susceptible to injuries in a long season and that’s going to make it more likely that he ends up getting hurt in uh the pacer in the playoff series which he did. I mean, you can bl people will blame other people for getting hurt that have no signs of showing any type of laziness or unpreparedness. But when he’s come out and said that he was out of shape and he gets hurt, that’s the guy that we defend for getting hurt. When you could actually put a direct line from something he did not working out hard enough to him getting hurt, that’s the guy we defend. No, I’m not defending that. Um, and the second year, for the most part, he did everything he could. But there’s a little something he could have done differently. Like if you like, in hindsight, it wasn’t the biggest thing, but it’s a thing. Him and Giannis not working together in the offseason. I mean, we talk about how um him and Giannis’ chemistry just never was as good as we wanted to be. A lot of that probably the biggest thing we would say would be coaching. Um, but part of that also has to go on that pie has to go to Giannis and Dame. And on both of them, not just Dame. They didn’t work to out together ever outside of the season. That’s a thing that goes both ways. Giannis is not a blameless guy in everything and Damen Lord isn’t either. Like that’s just another thing that ideally when your chemistry wasn’t great, turns out not to be great. You’re going to look back and see, oh, you came out and said how you didn’t work out together once during the offseason. I get it. It’s not the biggest thing in the world. You don’t have to, but it’s something that could have been done better. You could have found a way to get together once or twice. Um, and maybe that would have improved your chemistry just a little bit. Regardless, my overall point with all this is, can we stop acting like Dame was like a completely blameless dude that oh my goodness, poor him having to come to Milwaukee? No. Guys get traded all the time. Guys have family issues all the time. And when you’re a billionaire and you are actually the one that is requesting the trade and you even accepted the destination of where you went to, that is not the one person we should make an exception for and start making all these excuses for when things don’t work out as great as they should. Um, and like you could say that, you know, Jay Crowder obviously nowhere near as good of a player as Dame, but for expectations, he he also underperformed when you could say Dame Lord, especially the first year underperformed. Um, and like with Jay Crowder, it’s like his mom died not that long before he got traded. Like things happen, but nobody talks about that when it comes to Jay Crowder. And you won’t talk about that with any other player. But when it’s somebody that has sway in the media like Damen Lillard and um like we’re just use up all these excuses and say, “Oh my goodness, we can never blame him.” When like if you look at anybody, I’m sure in your personal life, you’ve got some personal personal issues going on. Everybody does. And I just don’t think that these rise to the level of like, oh, how could you talk about basketball? How could you expect him to be at his best basketball-wise? I just think that these are kind of he’s just trying different excuses. And I think that he should just own up to, you know what, it didn’t go as well as I wish it would have liked to. I wish I’d done a couple things better. And if he did that, I would have no ill will towards him whatsoever. Nobody’s perfect. Um, but I’m just a little annoyed at this point by the narrative out there that like he was a victim of having to be in Milwaukee when he chose to be traded and he accepted coming to Milwaukee and um that like it was only the issues around him and he had no part in it whatsoever. There was he didn’t he was not perfect in Milwaukee. He like wasn’t the sole blame at all. He shouldn’t have been the guy that’s gets all the blame. Not even close. but he wasn’t blameless and I don’t think he’s like somebody that’s deserving of just like straight up sympathy for having to be in Milwaukee. But that’s just my personal view. Let me know what you think. Drop a comment. Hit that like and subscribe if you want

Discussing Damian Lillard talking about having to go to Milwaukee to play for the Bucks #bucks #milwaukeebucks #nba
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