Portland Trail Blazers star Damian Lillard compared his backcourt relationship with youngster Anfernee Simons to ones he had with past veterans after Simons bounced back from a 6 point outing vs. the Denver Nuggets during Thursday’s 121-120 home loss by exploding for 31 points last night vs. the Minnesota Timberwolves in a 124-118 win at home.
(via Portland Trail Blazers):
“Early in my career, I always say it, but I always had vets or teammates that encouraged me to, ‘Just be true to you, keep doing what you do. It happens, keep going.’ That was Mo Williams & Earl Watson, like I always say, Jared Jeffries, and then Evan Turner was always in my ear like, ‘So what? You Dame Lillard! Keep going!’ So the tough nights didn’t feel bad. It was just like, ‘Alright, keep going.’ And with Ant [Simons], he’s the type of person that is never too high or never too low. He’s gonna be his biggest critic. He holds himself to a standard, and I’m going to hold him to a standard. He knows that I’m gonna tell him the truth and I’m gonna get on his a** because I have high expectations for him in his career and right now. So we didn’t even need to have no big discussion about last game. The only thing I said to him was like, ‘You just gotta be aggressive. Don’t worry about me. Don’t worry about Jerami [Grant]. Don’t worry about nobody else. You gotta attack and you gotta be aggressive, and you gotta be you.’
“Even last game, I was telling him, ‘You’re struggling, but people like you and me, when you play the right way and keep your mind in the right place, you’re always gonna have an opportunity to come up big.’ We lost last game, but he ended up hitting a big shot, and that’s the way it goes. So coming out tonight, I literally didn’t even come into the game thinking like, ‘How is he going to respond?’ It was just another game. That’s how it was in his head, too. Just watching him, he was smiling. He was his normal self. Usually, you can see a guy in their head trying to be overly locked in because they’ve gotta do something. And it wasn’t like that. That’s what the real players do, and he’s a real player. So I wasn’t shocked at all. I didn’t think much of it.”
