{"id":729676,"date":"2021-10-27T16:08:15","date_gmt":"2021-10-27T20:08:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/?p=729676"},"modified":"2021-10-27T18:20:08","modified_gmt":"2021-10-27T22:20:08","slug":"damian-lillard-optimistic-about-portland-trailblazer-success-this-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/news\/nba\/damian-lillard-optimistic-about-portland-trailblazer-success-this-season\/","title":{"rendered":"Damian Lillard Says He&#8217;s &#8216;Optimistic&#8217; About Portland Contending for NBA Title"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Damian Lillard has entered year ten with the Portland Trail Blazers, but questions have circulated about how long Dame wants to continue playing with the Blazers after four opening round losses in the last five years.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Despite the coaching changes in the offseason\u2014<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/nba\/terry-stotts-portland-trail-blazers-coaching-tenure-comes-to-an-end\/\" target=\"_blank\">from the departure of Terry Stotts<\/a> to <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/nba\/damian-lillard-and-blazers-reportedly-at-odds-over-chauncey-billups-hire\/\" target=\"_blank\">the hiring of current head coach Chauncey Billups<\/a>\u2014Lillard says he&#8217;s had a conversation with Billups and is &#8220;all in&#8221; on the team being a contender this season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m optimistic. I\u2019m a believer,\u201d Lillard told <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nba.com\/news\/damian-lillard-optimistic-blazers-can-contend?b=\" target=\"_blank\">NBA.com<\/a>. \u201cAnd I love this organization.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt was never out of hate or that we don\u2019t like each other,\u201d he added. \u201cIt was just, \u2018This is how much I want to win it.\u2019 So, once it was time to come back and I had a conversation with Chauncey and had a conversation with Neil, I\u2019m not going to come back halfhearted. I\u2019m going to come back and be all in.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/RxxueDqPAyU\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe>\n\n\n\n<p>While Dame&#8217;s averages of 17 points per game while shooting 36 percent from the field and 8.3 percent from three-point range are below his career averages of 24.6 points per game, 43.8 percent shooting and 37.4 percent from behind the line, Billups says things will &#8220;work itself out&#8221;:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI think Dame is probably in the middle of trying to play and do some of the new things that we\u2019re asking, but also [figuring] out when to really be aggressive,\u201d Billups said. \u201cHe\u2019s one of the best players in the game for a reason. You play through him, and everything kind of works itself out.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Damian and the Blazers take on Memphis Grizzlies on Wednesday October 27th.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Damian Lillard has entered year ten with the Portland Trail Blazers, but questions have circulated about how long Dame wants to continue playing with the Blazers after four opening round losses in the last five years. Despite the coaching changes in the offseason\u2014from the departure of Terry Stotts to the hiring of current head coach [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":437,"featured_media":729698,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,62493,62717],"tags":[8383,62523,12990,113],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-729676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nba","category-newswire","category-portland-trail-blazers","tag-damian-lillard","tag-mantle","tag-nba","tag-portland-trail-blazers"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/437"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=729676"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729676\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":729701,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729676\/revisions\/729701"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/729698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=729676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=729676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=729676"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=729676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}