 What's the word, y'all? Welcome to NBA ever so often. Or NBA sometimes. It's not NBA every day, it's the point I'm making. Who cares, okay? Today I want to talk about the Portland Trailblazers slash Damien Lillard. Been a hot topic over the past couple months. It just seems like every superstar goes through this point in their career where everybody wants to see them request a trade or we feel like it's run its course. And Damien Lillard is so stubborn, he won't do it. It's kind of admirable in a way. The same thing I can say about Bradley Beal, definitely admirable to want to stay loyal to the team that took a chance on you, especially since Damien wasn't like this number one type dude. There were still question marks around him when they drafted him. So I understand the loyalty to the organization. But I think a lot of NBA fans outside of Portland thinks that this whole marriage has definitely run its course. And the reason we're talking about this today is because Damien Lillard won on Instagram Live, something he does relatively often. And usually he don't be reading the comments like that but he did today and he answered the question. Damn, why are you leaving PDX? Where else is it? I'm not leaving PDX right now. I'm not leaving PDX right now at least. Just keeping it on the horizon, keeping it a possibility. We know that Damien Lillard is just a super loyal dude and he hasn't always been super vocal when it comes to his front office. This off season he was. I mean, he came into the podium, he was like, hey, I still want to win in Portland. And he's definitely in his weird spot because he stalked trash to other players specifically like Paul George talking about you ran away from the grind, the team up, yada, yada, yada. I would never do that. So I bet those words like ring through his head all the time when he's maybe contemplating whether or not he wants to request a trade. But he did come to the podium this off season. He said, hey, I love it here in Portland but we need to see significant change because the last time they made a run in the playoffs was what two seasons ago. And since then they've been first run exit and first run round exit. And the last one was overall just embarrassing for the entire team when you consider that they went against the Denver Nuggets without Jamal Murray. And Jamal Murray is their second best player and one of their more impactful dudes. They was losing to Campazo and Austin River. Do you remember the Austin Rivers game? Do you remember that game? You know, they were losing to that type of talent, a very embarrassing, embarrassing playoff performance. So he goes to the podium and he said, yo, my friend office, I don't know exactly what it is but we need to see significant changes. I'm tired of being this first round exit. And Neil O'Shea and company were like, no big deal. We gon' do what we can do. And what did they do? Remember that Damien Lillard wants to win the championship. That is his sole purpose of playing basketball at the moment. And he's putting pressure on his front office that we need to be a contender when in reality throughout the course of Damien Lillard's career they'd never really been a contender. I know they made the conference finals run but Edward Cabrera just gave up back-to-back home runs in the seventh. Just pull the plug, if you're curious about baseball content, link is in the description. But even when they made that conference finals run, how many people picked them to beat the Warriors literally zero? Maybe Damien Lillard himself, maybe. So he put the pressure on his front office and this is what they did to turn them into a contender the way Damien Lillard wants them to be. They re-signed Norman Powell. That makes sense. They traded away to Gary Transform so it makes sense for him to be back, W. They signed or what trade of four, Cody Zellab. No, how did Cody Zellab end up there? Cody Zellab is now on the team. Ben Macklemore is now on the team and probably the biggest one of them all. Tony Snail, 40, 50, 90 club, Tony Snail. That was their off-season. You know, their superstar player being at the podium and said, hey, we need moves and they brought in Cody Zellab. Let's go, Damien. One more time, one more run. And for majority of people, me included, and this will be the final straw, right? Oh man, I told y'all we needed significant moves and y'all ain't doing nothing, really? All right, now it is time for me to do my thing. Nope, not Damien Lillard. So loyal to the city of Portland, he refuses to request a training. Like I said earlier, it is admirable. Now I will say in the defense of Neil Loche and the defense of the front office of the Portland Trailblazers, there was nothing you could do to make yourself contenders right now. There was no peace out there to trade for. There was nobody to choose about the draft. So that is why I was just in the camp of Dame. It's time to move on. I don't think there'd be many people out there that would discredit Damien Lillard or be mad at Damien Lillard if he requested a trade. Those people would be the Die Hard Paul George fans. Yep, the Die Hard Paul George fans would be like, ah, you talked all that trash and you had to do the same thing. But I think majority of people understands how much he gave to the city or how much he gave to the organization and it's just run this course. Like think about the game. Y'all, I'm gonna refer to it as the game. First round, double overtime game versus the Denver Nuggets. I'm looking at the statistics right here. I recently rewatched a majority of this game. It's always fun to rewatch games without commercials and timeouts and free throws. How quick a game can be. This one was still long because it was a double overtime game. How insane of a performance it was for Damien Lillard. He ended with a total of 55 points on 71% shooting from the field and 71% shooting from three. It got so bad that Austin Rivers, who was guarding him in this game, literally prayed to God. He thanked God when Damien Lillard finally missed the shot. We always talk about hot hand and it's been a conversation amongst basketball fans for decades whether hot hand actually exists. This is proof. This game right here is proof that hot hand does exist because Damien Lillard was unstoppable. And then what happened? CJ McCullum was wearing size 16s and he stepped out of bounds. I'm not blaming CJ for the loss, but just in general, this was a game where nobody else on the team other than Damien Lillard and a little bit of Robert Covington came out to play in a double overtime. Must win game. This was game five of the series. And y'all know the statistic. Majority of the time, whoever wins game number five is going to win the series. It's like 70, 80% chance. You needed this game to get out of this round and they lost it with Dame dropping 55. It's just not a series that they should have lost. I think we can all agree. Even though the MVP was on the team that won, this was not a series that they should have lost. Austin Rivers didn't have a job three months before this. Campazo shouldn't have been able to hang with CJ McCullum and Damien Lillard and with them being so riddled with injury and I guess it's just one major injury, they shouldn't have lost this. Especially considering for the first time in a long time the Portland Trail Blazers were healthy. All it takes is a tweet, is an interview with Chris Haynes for the world, the NBA to be turned on his head. Because there are a few teams out there that have the assets I believe to potentially pull off a Damien Lillard trade. There are a few teams out there that have assets to pull off a Damien Lillard trade and they're patiently waiting for Damien Lillard or Bradley Beale or some other superstar player to realize maybe this ain't the place for me. But listen, though I say that, if I was the front office of the Portland Trail Blazers I would do the same thing they're doing right now. I am not trading Damien Lillard unless I absolutely have to. How many superstars in the league at one time? Six, seven, not many. And we have one right here right now. Even if we don't put together a championship roster I've set this on the channel before there is value in being good enough to make the playoffs. There are organizations out there that are over a decade, do you hear me? Over a decade without making the playoffs. We're one of the few teams out there that makes the playoffs almost every single season. And yeah, it doesn't end the way we wanted to. I can still convince my fans to come in and buy tickets to watch Damien Lillard. So I wouldn't be trading Damien unless I absolutely had to. Or Damien Lillard was on the last year of his deal because I just feel like, I mean, if Damien Lillard stayed in Portland until the last year of his deal he just feels like he's gonna go on tour and interview with every team and not come back. I also say that and I can realize that with Damien Lillard being 30, 31 years old and him still being in his prime and being one of the top yada yadas at his position maybe this is the perfect time to trade him. Especially, I don't know, I mean, I guess the value of Ben Simmons is up in the air. But especially if there's an organization looking and having this defensive player to your type guy this all-star caliber guy that's only 24 years old waiting to be traded. I don't know what the future of Ben Simmons looks like. I really don't know. But I think a lot of us look at the mode of Ben Simmons and can project that like a change of scenery could be very beneficial to him overall in his game. And I would hate for Portland to potentially make a trade. And it looks like the James Harden trade. Now before the Houston Rockets fans come at my throat I don't mean like that y'all did terrible on the trade. I am just a guy that would much rather have a materialistic player in the moment, especially if you're trading away a superstar to that team. You know what I'm saying? Like some of those Brooklyn Pitts are gonna be 27th, 28th, 29th, 30th, KD signing extension, James Harden and Kyrie are already thinking about signing extension. You know what I'm saying? So this might be the prime opportunity to make a trade for Damian Lither where you also get trade pieces. You get a trade draft assets, but you also get an all-star caliber player in the Benjamin Simmons. Now I don't know what other star player would become available or just young player or player in general that would become available if Damian Lither requested a trade. But I can't imagine the 76 are the only one. Damian Lither is that nice. And I feel like a lot of teams will just get rid of their entire future to bring in Damian Lither if they feel like they're this close. I know a lot of Celtics fans don't like this idea and I know some Celtics fans do like this idea. Of a Jalen Brown swap. Yes, Jalen Brown fits with Jason Tatum as far as timeline goes. JT is already one of the better players in the league. There's no, the timeline is now because he's a star. You know? I know some fans like it, I know some fans don't. The Knicks have some young players and they have a ton of draft capital. I don't think this is realistic because everything about Toronto seems like a youth movement but it's Masai, he's done something like this before. And as much as I hate the idea, the Warriors are still a threat too because they have so much draft capital and they have so many young assets on their team. Steph Curry and Damian on the same team probably just looks terrible but then again fun at the same time. So I mean, those are all the teams I could see having the type of capital to make it happen. And then there's always, there's always a sleeper type team that nobody, I should wrap up this video before my power goes out. There's always a sleeper type team that can potentially have assets. So as of right now, Damian Lillard has not requested to trade and will be ready for the Trailblazers and I guess we'll see what happens in the future.