Damian Lillard Postgame Press Conference | 1.24.24

Damian Lillard Postgame Press Conference | 1.24.24

I mean just your reaction when you heard the news yesterday about uh Adrian Griffin kind of what was your thoughts feelings U I think it was like everybody else you know just kind of surprised by it um you know as long as I’ve been in the league I’ve um I haven’t seen where

You know a team is having success and you know then something like that happens but um I’ve also been around long enough to know that um it’s part of the business you know um is there’s expectations um there’s been a lot of expectations on our team um things have

Been expected to look a certain way you know we’ve kind of had a bumpy road to Our Success which is sometimes a part of the process but um like I said I was surprised um but it’s part of the game you know people get traded people get

Waved um people get fired and that’s that’s never something you want to see um as a person you never want to um witness somebody having to go through that and experience that and pick up their life and just move on to the next thing because at the end of the day we

All go home to our our personal time and our personal lives and we deal with our emotions and experiences so you don’t wish that on nobody but I think we all come into this game understanding that it’s part of it and it’s uh it’s unfortunate and Griff was a great dude

Um you know I enjoy being around him uh you know he was very accommodating to me and a lot of my personal situation um so I I appreciate them and I appreciate the time that we had together but it’s like I said it’s part of the game and it’s it’s the

Unfortunate side of it you know despite y’all’s record you kind of mentioned just like kind of the bumpiness of it still this season do you feel like y’all have been playing to your full potential so far I don’t uh I think that’s uh one of the the positives of where we are

Considering that it’s been kind of Rocky and up and down to get here you know being almost 20 games over 500 um and still knowing that we haven’t been the best version of ourselves I think we should be encouraged by it but we should also um understand that it’s a

Process to get there and we got to keep fighting that fight and doing the things necessary to to make sure that we continue to improve because when we get to that level that we want to get to and when things start to click and we find

Our way um in the end I think we’ll be the team that everybody probably expected us to just come out here day one and B and um I think the encouraging thing about that is you you want to be a team that’s playing that way and that’s

Uh that version of yourself at the right time you know you don’t want to just come out November and you know clicking on all cylinders and you don’t experience that Verity until the worst time so um I think it’s a um it’s something that could be considered a

Positive thing as long as we keep working towards it what kind of just like a a message does that send when you you said you see that dire record but you see that kind of change for you got all the players in the locker room like

What message does that send and how do you want um you guys to respond as a team to it I think the number one thing is you just um I think it just shows the the level of urgency it is to win big and uh what’s expected you know the

Standard that’s that’s expected to be out there and um if there anything to take away I think that would be it looking back at your last um match up against the Cavs what did you see from your team tonight as far as Improvement goes that you want to carry over into

Friday when you face him again I just thought we were sharper to start the game and defensively um you know we didn’t just allow guys to run around free and be comfortable getting to spots and get comfortable shots I thought we were present we were physical our coverages we were much

Sharper uh than we had been in the last game and I you know anytime you make guys work getting from A to B and and it’s not comfortable and then on the offensive end we moving the ball we screening we playing with with good Pace you know it’s not going to be as

Comfortable of a game for the other team and I thought that was uh something that we did much better tonight as someone whom the team does view as one of the leaders was there uh like a mindset or a certain mentality that you found yourself needing to go into just in

Light of all of the changes like was that something where you’re like okay I have to be this version of myself for my team today um not really I think the fact that we are a veteran in team I I didn’t think it was something where like

Oh I got to come out and have some crazy mentality I think we’ve all been around long enough to understand uh that this is um you know it’s an emotional situation cuz we care about each other as men first uh but we also understand

We got a job to do and um you know nobody’s going to feel bad for us nobody’s going to take it easy on us because of you know what we might be experiencing so um I think the experience of our team just came through for us tonight we came out sharp uh I

Thought in shoot around we were sharp you know it was we knew what what the task was and we knew what happened the last time we played him and um we wanted to come out in the first of these two games and just kind of set the tone on our home

Floor D what did you uh see from Giannis playmaking wise tonight and just kind of generally in this last stretch as he’s been racking up these triple doubles uh I think uh you know you just hear coaches out there saying you know load up wall up where they want them to

You know just show him body so he’s not just getting in the paint dunking laying the ball in and I think with our Personnel we got a lot of Shooters out there a lot of guys who’ve done that for a long time and um when they do that and

Take away those driving Lanes you know I think he’s been doing a great job of just finding the shooters and um you know I think when he’s making those plays teams are in a tough position cuz you know we not knocking down threes and now you you got guys worried about their

Man hitting a couple threes and you know now it’s going to open up those driving lanes and um that’s what we need you know because we we need him to be able to do what he does and is get to the rim and attack and put pressure on the

Defense and pressure on the rim uh but the I think the plays that he’s been making you know hitting the guys in the corner um getting into the paint drawing the defense and kicking it out for threes I think that’s um great for our team and um I think it’s uh the best

Version of him you know when he’s not uh just trying to get downhill get downhill but when they show that wall he’s you know showing that trust and making those plays I think that’s when we’re the most effective talked about the focus y’all hadn’t shoot around just what was the

Mood of the team this in the hours leading up to this game and how difficult was it to kind of maintain your focus and stay focused with everything going on or was that difficult at all I mean it was just kind of quiet you know

Um like I I said I think our our experience really worked in our favor um in this situation we’ve all experienced a lot of things I think this was different for everybody but uh I think we just understood that like we had a game tonight and it was going to be a tough

Game against a really good team that that kind of handled us the last time we played them so it was it was quiet because of the the circumstances but I think everybody was engaged you know we were sharp um everything was clear and shoot around and film

Joe did a great job of just going over everything getting up there on the board going over the film and just kind of making everything that we was going to do coming into the game clear and uh we came out and did what we had to do Damian what’s it like having the

Speculation now about new coaches coming in for instance Doc Rivers I think that’s um outside of our job description you know we um as professional our job is to to show up and be prepared to do what we got to do and it’s it’s not something

That’s new to us what we do on the floor and our team is still the same so I think we just we just show up and focus on what we can control and do what we do and I thought that was what we did tonight and everything else that’s

Coming next you know I think you you cross that bridge when you get to it and you address those things when you get to it but it’s not like us as players got to go out there and you know find a culture handle that you know we leave that to Um the front office and we do what we do and let them do what they do and then when it all comes together um you know we hit the ground running

Damian Lillard speaks with media following the Bucks’ victory over the Cleveland Cavaliers.

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