Blazers' Damian Lillard is playing through a wave of family tragedies: 'People have no idea'

Authored by theathletic.com and submitted by Ps3FifaCfc95

It was last week, when the Trail Blazers were in Los Angeles, when Damian Lillard didn’t know if he could play against the Lakers.

His body was fine. His mind wasn’t.

“I thought about (not playing), because mentally I was like … I don’t want to say I didn’t care, because I did care,” Lillard said. “But emotionally, I was like, whatever.”

His emotions had been worn thin because, in the past 18 months, it seemed like he had lived a lifetime. In 2020, he was the first to discover the dead body of his cousin and personal chef. An aunt died from cancer. A family friend died of COVID-19. And in the early months of 2021, a cousin was killed in West Oakland.

And then last Thursday, the day before the Lakers game, Lillard learned of the shooting deaths of two people in his inner circle. One was a cousin close enough to Lillard to be at his family’s Thanksgiving dinner in Portland in November.

Accomplished_Bid7987 on March 3rd, 2021 at 17:38 UTC »

He posted a few pics of family/friends who have passed away recently on his instagram.

ProudStephew on March 3rd, 2021 at 17:18 UTC »

Simply awful. Huge respect to same. Oakland has your back man

_Quetzalcoatlus_ on March 3rd, 2021 at 17:15 UTC »

Here are a few short sections for those who don't have The Athletic (it's a much longer article)

His emotions had been worn thin because, in the past 18 months, it seemed like he had lived a lifetime. In 2020, he was the first to discover the dead body of his cousin and personal chef. An aunt died from cancer. A family friend died of COVID-19. And in the early months of 2021, a cousin was killed in West Oakland.

And then last Thursday, the day before the Lakers game, Lillard learned of the shooting deaths of two people in his inner circle. One was a cousin close enough to Lillard to be at his family’s Thanksgiving dinner in Portland in November. The other was like family — the best friend of perhaps his closest cousin, who was among the first family members to move to Portland when Lillard was drafted by the Trail Blazers in 2012.

In May of 2020, he checked in on the Portland-area home of his cousin and personal chef, Brandon Johnson, and found him dead on the kitchen floor. Brandon, or Chef B as he was called, was 35.

“I stood over his body, man. Like, he was dead. Minutes. I’m standing over his body,” Lillard said. “People don’t know what type of trauma that is, and what that is to have somebody that close to you laid out and you stand over him. Like, I still struggle with that. You know what I mean? Like, I still struggle with that. That’s a battle for me.”

That morning, Lillard called teammate CJ McCollum, who was also close to Johnson, and when McCollum arrived, the two cried together in the kitchen.

“I was hurt by that,” Lillard said. “I cried a lot. Just hurt … I was with B every day, and in the summers when I would travel to train, he would come and make sure I was eating right. I was with him every day. Talked with him every day. Sat there with him every day. So that one just had me hurt. To this day.”

“I told Nate it’s been weird, my son (Damian Jr.) has been like ‘Dad … Dad … Dad … every 30 seconds,”’ Lillard said. “Dad, let’s go downstairs. Dad, let’s watch TV. Dad, play dinosaur. Over and over. And I told Nate that it just brought me happiness, that he was calling me ‘Dad’ over and over. He doesn’t know what doing on with me, but he knows I’m his dad.”

If Lillard leaves the room, Junior stops what he is doing and follows.

“And when I’m holding the twins and feeding them, just knowing they belong to me, and that one day they are going to feel as strongly about me as Junior?” Lillard said. “It helps things a lot when you come home to that.”