OAKLAND, Calif. — Long before he was the face of the Portland Trail Blazers, or “Lillard Time” captured the hearts of Rip City, Damian Lillard was rooted in Oakland.
"The Town" is where his story begins.
“I grew up in the neighborhood. I wasn’t wild, but I was a neighborhood kid. I wasn’t backing down from a fight, I wasn’t backing down from an argument,” Lillard said.
His days at Oakland High School helped mold him into the person he is today.
“If I wasn’t doing what I was supposed to in study hall, they held me accountable at a level I hadn’t been held accountable before.”
Pictures of Lillard playing for the Wildcats basketball team as a junior and senior are peppered throughout the school, and in its yearbooks.
“Everybody had 3.8s and 4.0s. I was the only dude that was like, ‘Let’s go hoop’ and everyone was like, ‘We gotta do our homework first.’ So I kind of got accustomed to that type of culture when I came here to Oakland High.”
His coach, Orlando Watkins, taught Lillard some valuable lessons, like: Don’t forget your shoes on game day.
“I see a kid taking his shoes off and I went to the young man and I’m like, ‘What are you doing?’ He’s like, ‘I’m taking my shoes off so Dame can play.’ 'Dame’s not playing. Dame is going to watch this game, and if you take your shoes off you’ll be watching this game too,'” said Watkins. “The kid put his shoes on, we played the game and Dame never forgot his shoes again.”
He always knows what time it is because being late will put you on the bench, even when a college coach is there to recruit you.
“He was like, ‘I want to play the first quarter’ and I was like, ‘You should have got here on time,’” Watkins said. "'But it wasn’t my fault.' 'You should have got here on time,' so we have all these great stories and all these stories help make him who he is. It helped build this program to where it is right now."
Lillard hasn’t forgotten where he came from. He donated shoes and uniforms to the school’s basketball teams. He upgraded the weight room with new equipment and hooked up the gym with fresh coats of paint and new backboards. Coach Watkins calls it one of the best looking gyms in the city.
“That’s big for an inner city school. We don’t have a lot of resources and to be able to get that without asking for it just echoes how he remembers where he came from,” said Watkins.
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