I’m still thinking about that game. Amazing finish, and they were down 8 with like 3 minutes left. This was great:
From rage to redemption: The night they roared in Rip City https://theathletic.com/942482/2019/04/24/from-rage-to-redemption-the-night-they-roared-in-rip-city/
PORTLAND — They roared. Oh my, did they roar.
It’s what you do when you see history. It’s what you vocalize when you witness greatness. It’s what awakens the gatekeeper to Legend and allows a moment to enter.
So for five minutes … 10 minutes … 15 minutes … they roared in Portland. It was just past 10 p.m. on a Tuesday night in late April, and the boxscore will say the roar came from 20,241 at the Moda Center, but there might have been a few ghosts in there, too.
Bill Walton. Sam Bowie. Greg Oden. Brandon Roy. The memories that have haunted this Portland Trail Blazers franchise were in those roars, released from the guts, the hearts and the minds of this fanbase.
It has been a franchise with spectacular failures and tortured decisions. The 15-point lead in Game 7 in Los Angeles. Bowie over Jordan. Martell Webster over Chris Paul. And most recently, a humilating sweep in the 2018 playoffs.
That’s why, when a 37-foot jump shot at the buzzer went in, they roared. Roared like they never have before. They roared because the shot beat the hated Oklahoma City Thunder in Game 5 to seal a 4-to-1 series victory. Roared because Russell Westbrook was going home.
And they roared because what everyone figured was another jinxed season that has every reason to join the graveyard of past Blazers’ failures, just keeps on living.
That roar thundered, and it rolled, and underneath it all was the man who made the shot.
And guess what?
He didn’t hear it.
“I was blanking out,” he said. “I was having my own thoughts. I was … angry. Not that type of anger like I was mad, but anger like I was in a rage.”
It was April 23, 2019, and Damian Lillard had just played one of the greatest games, and had hit one of the greatest shots in franchise history, but his mind was back to the quiet of April 2018.
Back to the sweep, and the painful summer that ensued. Back to the embarrassment he felt. Back to the rage he felt inside. The rage was back now, only different.
So as a city roared, and a franchise exhaled, a man walked through the gates of Legend and roared his arrival.
“Yeah,” Lillard said he thought in the moment. “What you all have to say now?”
To understand the rage, and the elation and the celebration of Damian Lillard on Tuesday, one has to understand where he has been.
“This has been my whole story, bro,” Lillard told The Athletic.
Every accomplishment has been borne from a slight. And for every success, there has been a failure.
For all his buzzer beaters, there are twice as many misses. And for his epic last-second shots that have won playoff series against Houston in 2014 and now Oklahoma City, there are humbling performances against Mike Conley and Memphis in 2015 and Jrue Holiday and New Orleans last season.
It is these failures, and the will it spawns inside of him that resonates so deeply with this basketball-crazed state. Like us, he is not perfect. But unlike many of us, he refuses to make excuses in the face of failure, instead choosing to look inward.
It is there, in self-reflection, where his mother, Gina Johnson, found her son last April at their Lake Oswego home following the Blazers’ sweep.
“It kept coming on the TV, and he didn’t want to watch basketball after that,” Johnson said. “He had to come back from that. So, I saw him putting on his game face. That never-give-up work ethic. And he made it happen.”
He worked on his defense. He studied film to better equipped himself to handle double-teams and traps. And more than anything, he opened himself and let it all in. The criticism. The blame. The rage.
“When we lost last year, I didn’t make any excuses,” Lillard said. “I took it on the chin. My fault. When you own up to shit … like, there’s stuff y’all don’t even know. There’s stuff about that series I didn’t say because I don’t want no sympathy. I don’t want no crutch. Blame me.”
He took the criticism. And he internalized it and used it as fuel. And when he reported to training camp, he began planting seeds.
“When you stick together, and keep your composure, there’s something waiting for you at the end,” Lillard said. “The only thing I know is when I always stay with it, and have the right attitude about things, it’s a powerful thing. In the end, that’s the way the universe works.”
So as he approached halfcourt Tuesday, the score tied at 115, and the clock ticking from 12 to 11 to 10, those who were closest to Lillard throughout last summer, braced for greatness. As he rose up, Johnson left her seat and headed for the court.
“I’m like, ‘Move, move, move’ …,” she said. “And as soon as he left that ball go, I knew it was The Shot. I took off running.”
She ran because she had seen the work her son had put in. She ran because she could feel the pain he harbored all summer. And she ran because she knew.
“I knew,” she said, “that he had put in real dedication.”
When the shot — or is it The Shot? — went in, Lillard waved good bye to the Oklahoma City bench. His brother, Houston, rushed to him on the court, where they hugged and were dogpiled by Damian’s Blazers teammates.
“My boys have an incredible relationship,” Johnson said. “I knew it was going to be something between the two, and then I saw Houston run to the court. But I didn’t think it was going to be that. That was a special.”
They hugged, a big bear-hug, and then Lillard’s teammates mugged him, and the brotherly embrace was buried in a dogpile that spilled into the stands. Of all of what went on Tuesday, that embrace with his brother will stand out.
“He knows what is was like after last year,” Lillard said. “People had all that shit to say, and he knew what it was like, and he was one of the main people telling me there was going to be times like that, and to keep coming back, that it always comes back when you stay with it. He was there to witness the bounce back.”
So too, was a special visitor.
Injured Blazers center Jusuf Nurkic made an appearance at Moda Center for Game 5. (Photo: AP Photo/Craig Mitchelldyer)
With about three minutes left in the third quarter, he decided it was time. That’s when Jusuf Nurkic loaded up on pain killers and started getting dressed.
He was headed to the Moda Center.
“I knew I could make a difference,” he said.
Nurkic, the Blazers’ standout center, had not returned to the Moda Center since March 25, when he suffered a gruesome compound fracture of his tibia and fibula. It was that night that many thought the Blazers’ season was over, the time to call the hearse and drive this season to the graveyard of so many past disappointments.
Lillard had visited Nurkic that night in the hospital, but they said little. They slapped hands and hugged. Nurkic, Lillard said, just shook his head, his swollen and blood-shot eyes saying all that needed to be said.
The day before Game 1, Nurkic surprised the team during their final film session, but he had yet to attend a game, the pain and the risk of a player crashing into him too great.
But he could sense something in that third quarter, and knew he was needed. By the time he made the 25 minute drive to the Moda Center, the Thunder had already gone on a 30-6 run, turning the Blazers’ 84-75 lead into a 105-90 deficit.
He crutched his way down the hallway, past the locker room and through the tunnel that leads to the court. He then abandoned his crutches and stood between Evan Turner and Meyers Leonard, the two stationed to block any players who might crash into him during play.
With 3:20 left, and the Blazers trailing 113-105, the Jumbotron showed Nurkic standing on the sideline amid the Blazers’ players. The place went nuts. All the anxiety of the late-game deficit, all the tension of facing a potential Game 6 in Oklahoma City, seemed to funnel into a tornado of energy.
From there, the Blazers closed the game on a 13-2 run.
“He gave us a nice punch,” Lillard said with a smile.
It was March 14 when the Blazers had finished a practice at Smoothie King Center in New Orleans, and Damian Lillard sat alone at midcourt, in the first row of the stands.
It was his first trip back to New Orleans since the sweep, but he said he didn’t feel any emotion one way or the other. But we started talking about the playoffs, and whether this team was equipped to succeed, and what it would take to win.
“I think for us, it’s just having a big performance,” he said that day. “If we come out and have a big performance, you show yourself, ‘OK, that happened.’ And from that big performance, maybe you win a big first-round series, and now going forward, you know what it feels like. You are more certain going forward. But that’s what we need, we need a big performance.”
Little did he know that March day just how prescient he would be. But this wasn’t just a big performance. There was talk immediately after whether it was the biggest shot, and best performance in franchise history.
“It’s the best shot I’ve seen in person, best game,” Blazers coach Terry Stotts said. “It was a better shot than the Houston game in the context of the game he was having. (The shot was) further out … it was contested. I mean, the 0.9 shot to me was the first, and you always remember the first, (but) this one, to me the moment of it, the anticipation of it, you could see it coming, just … it was special.”
Rodney Hood, who advanced to the Finals last season with Cleveland, said it stood above anything he has seen in his five-year career.
“That’s one of the craziest ones I’ve ever seen … I saw a couple last year in the playoffs with ‘Bron, but that’s the best one I’ve seen in person,” Hood said.
It will go down in Blazers lore, not as meaningful as Walton’s magnificent 1977 run to the NBA title, and perhaps not as sustained as the Clyde Drexler-Terry Porter-Jerome Kersey runs to the Finals, and that’s how Lillard wants it.
He reminds this was a shot to win a first-round playoff series. That’s it.
“Our goal isn’t to win one round,” Lillard said. “We are happy with our performance, but this is just the first step in the direction we want to go in.”
Damian Lillard carries his son, Damian Jr., after the Blazers’ Game 5 win. (Photo: Jason Quick / The Athletic)
He said this as he held his one-year-old son, Damian Jr., who was wrapped around his neck, his daddy’s hands cupping his bottom, which was covered with Blazers pajamas.
“This is every day,” he said, nodding down to his son. “If this shot wouldn’t have went in, this would have been happening anyway. That’s real happiness.”
As he held his son, it was hard to remember that not long ago, a city roared, a team dogpiled, and he rose to take a victory lap around the arena, slapping hands with fans along the way.
This night, he was carrying more than his son. He was carrying a team, a fan base, and a dream. It’s why he said he took that victory lap, making sure to touch hands as he went.
“We all in this together,” Lillard said.
― DJI, Wednesday, 24 April 2019 15:17 (four years ago) link