There was a lot riding on Sunday’s game for Milwaukee Bucks star Damian Lillard. After all, this was the first time he was facing his former team following his decision to leave the organization this past summer.
Dame spent 11 fruitful years as the Portland Trail Blazers’ cornerstone superstar so you just know that there was going to be a lot of emotions for him when he battled them for the first time in his career.
Milwaukee Bucks Star Damian Lillard Gets Real on Blazers Reunion
Despite the compelling narrative, however, Lillard, as always, has remained as cool as a cucumber. In fact, it appears that everyone else had put a lot more stock in Sunday’s game than Lillard himself. According to the seven-time All-Star, playing against Portland was just like any other game for him:
“Them coming here don’t even feel like; it feels like another game where I’m going to see people I used to spend a lot of time with,” Dame said, via Jim Owczarski of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “The team is really different. Obviously the staff is the same that I played for the last few years but it’s not; I don’t think it’ll be like a big deal or nothing like that. Like it will be when I go back to Portland.”
Lillard did admit that it felt a little bit “weird” to be on the opposing team, but for the most part, he treated Sunday’s reunion as nothing more than another regular-season contest. Like he said, the Blazers are a much different team now than when he left them, which makes the reunion a bit less meaningful.
Be that as it may, you can be sure that his return to Portland is going to be much different. As much as Dame tries to play that down, there’s no doubt that it’s going to be an emotional reunion when he returns to his former stomping ground on January 31.
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