NBA75: At No. 68, Damian Lillard went from milk-crate hoops to Dame Time

October 17, 2024

Welcome to the NBA 75, The Athletic’s countdown of the 75 best players in NBA history, in honor of the league’s diamond anniversary. From Nov. 1 through Feb. 18, we’ll unveil a new player on the list every weekday except for Dec. 27-31, culminating with the man picked by a panel of The Athletic NBA staff members as the greatest of all time.

The telephone pole that helped spawn one of the greatest players in NBA history is still standing on Clara Street in East Oakland. It’s the same pole, Damian Lillard assures because after all these years he can still see the nails in its side, all curled and gnarled.

The nails were hammered by Lillard’s grandfather Albert to secure a plastic milk crate that would serve as a makeshift basketball hoop. Albert sawed out the bottom of a crate, then hammered through the plastic and into the pole. To further secure the hoop, he hammered through the openings of the black crates and bent the nail around. Lillard guessed that Albert must have used 10 nails.

“Even if you go there right now, you will see a bunch of nails in the pole,” Lillard said. “They are still in it. And they are all around it. Because once a crate broke, he would position another one somewhere else.”

The telephone pole, and the milk-crate hoop nailed to it, was the second basket Lillard used as a youth. An oak tree in front of his grandparent’s home had the most serendipitous evolution. As a branch grew, it curled and circled.

“Literally, the branch of the tree was shaped just like a hoop,” Lillard said. “I used to shoot on a tree.”

But when Lillard was in the fifth grade, the city had to cut down the tree. He was devastated.

“That’s why I ended up getting the milk crates,” Lillard said.

Two things happened on those crates. First, there was no backboard, just the rounded pole. It taught him to shoot true. And second, he knew he had to figure out how to compensate for his small size. That’s part of why Clara Street, and those milk crates, are so special to him. It’s where he first started to develop the long shot.

“I was small,” Lillard said. “So I would shoot from far so people couldn’t block my shot. So even as a kid, I shot from deep.”

Nearly two decades later, the kid who started shooting on a tree, and later milk crates, has become a perennial All-Star for the Portland Trail Blazers and is one of the more feared late-game shooters — and most accurate long-range shooters — in today’s game. Since he entered the league in 2012, nobody has made more go-ahead field goals in the final minute (35), and nobody has made more 30-foot shots (138).

His still-growing résumé is why Lillard landed at No. 68 on The Athletic’s list of the NBA’s top 75 players of all time. At 31, he is one of the youngest and shortest-tenured players on the list, but already he has helped change how today’s game is played.

It’s a long way from Clara Street to being named one of the greatest NBA players ever, but ever since those days as a kid, when those nails were being hammered into the telephone pole, Lillard could tell this sport had a hold on him and wouldn’t let go.

The Trail Blazers took Lillard with the No. 6 pick in the 2012 NBA Draft. (Jesse D. Garrabrant / NBAE via Getty Images)

He was a shortstop in baseball.

“I was good in baseball,” Lillard said. “Baseball came easy to me.”

He was a running back, receiver and linebacker in football.

“I was good in football,” he said. “Football came easy to me.”

And when he learned how to box, he was a natural.

“Pivot and slip,” he said, putting his hands up and shifting his weight. “All that — I was good at it.”

But there was something about basketball that was different. He understood the other sports, but basketball spoke to him, like it was already inside him. He just needed to bring it out.

“I just had this feel for it,” Lillard said. “Like, I understand boxing well. I understand football well. I understand baseball well. But basketball, my feel for how to play the game and what’s about to happen, what should happen … those instincts, I just always had it.”

Those instincts formed almost an intimate relationship with the game. He knew the game. And the game knew him. And the more the two spent together, the more he couldn’t break away.

“My feel for the game was always there, and that’s why I enjoyed playing the game so much,” Lillard said.

He enjoyed the other sports, but he had a passion for basketball. The type of passion that when Lillard says he loved basketball, he emphasizes the LOV.

“Like, I never wanted to stop playing,” he said. “When I went to the (Ira Jinkins) rec center, I would play game after game, after game, after game, after game. I just LOVed playing. LOVed playing. I could play all day, literally. Me and my brother (Houston) would get up in the morning in the summer, go to the rec, be there all day, then go to the school (Brookfield Elementary), be there all day until someone was at the fence of the school yelling, ‘Damian! Houston! Y’all have to come home!”’

Lillard had his favorites — Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, Paul Pierce, Ray Allen, Allen Iverson — but it was Iverson whom he held in the highest regard.

“I was imitating Iverson because he was small, and he had that neighborhood energy,” Lillard said. “Everybody in my neighborhood loved A.I. So, it was like — a thing. Everybody wore Iversons.”

So he would be out in Clara Street, by himself, trying to be like Iverson. Crossovers, stepbacks … it was another part of why he fell in love with this sport. He could do it alone. To get better, he didn’t need someone to tackle or someone to pitch to him. All he needed was a ball and some space.

“There was so much that I felt I could get better at,” Lillard said. “My shooting. My left hand. Right hand. Stepbacks, 360 moves. So I would be outside, by myself, working to get better.”

That thirst to get better would end up changing not only his game but also the NBA game.

It was in his lowest moment as a pro that Lillard decided to evolve.

It was 2018, and the third-seeded Trail Blazers had been swept by the sixth-seeded New Orleans Pelicans in the first round of the playoffs. All series, Lillard was hounded by Jrue Holiday and a trapping Pelicans defense. He felt like he had little room to operate, let alone shoot.

He recoiled into seclusion that summer, analyzing his game and vowing to come back better and, more importantly, different. He thought back to Clara Street and that milk crate and telephone pole and the games he would play against his brother Houston.

They would play games to 100, but there was a catch: If a car was passing through the court, and you shot from the other side of the street and made it, it was worth 10 points, not two. Those deep shots helped develop a killer instinct for Lillard. He shot from deep in high school, and he shot from deep in college at Weber State. It was in college in Odgen, Utah, that he began working out with Phil Beckner, then an assistant at Weber State.

“In college, me and Phil started working on it over, and over, and over, and over, and over,” Lillard said.

Eventually, Lillard coaxed Beckner to leave college coaching and be his trainer. And after that 2018 sweep to New Orleans, the two had an idea: What if Lillard could create his own space by playing further out on the perimeter?

“We had been working on the shot so much, it was like, ‘You need to be able to use this as a weapon,”’ Lillard said. “After getting swept, that’s when I was like, I have to get so good at this that this can be a normal shot. Then I started working on it with even more purpose.”

It was a process. When Lillard began the 2018-19 season with an intent to expand his range, the long-range bombs weren’t always met with approval from Terry Stotts, then the coach of the Blazers.

“When I used to shoot them, Terry used to get mad,” Lillard said. “He wouldn’t say nothing, but I would see him. I could see his body language out of my peripheral. He would put his hand on the scorer’s table, put his head back or put his hands up. You know, the stuff you can’t hide, it’s just your natural reaction.”

What many didn’t realize was how much work Lillard had put into the shot. The repetitions of pulling up off the dribble. The sidestep to create even more space. And the relentless shooting sessions, mornings and nights, from the summer throughout the season.

“I believed in it,” Lillard said. “Because when I shoot those deep shots, it doesn’t feel like a hard shot for me. If I was shooting and it was like, man this is a hard shot for me to shoot, then I wouldn’t shoot it consistently. But it wasn’t hard.”

Eventually, his work — and the results — were hard to ignore. Stotts would stay and watch Lillard shoot from the half-court logo after morning shootarounds. He would see him staying after practice and shoot from where few, if any, players dared.

“Over time, when Terry saw how often I was working on it, and how it was going in more and more, then it was … nothing,” Lillard said.

Lillard waved goodbye to the Thunder in April 2019 when he nailed a series-clinching 37-footer. (Jaime Valdez / USA Today)

He had the green light. And never did it burn brighter than in the 2019 playoffs. With the memory of the 2018 sweep still fresh, Lillard shot Portland into the second round with a Game 5 masterpiece: a 50-point performance that eliminated Oklahoma City. The dagger was a game-winning 37-footer at the buzzer.

Just like he had practiced.

“Overall, I’m just a believer,” Lillard said. “Even when things aren’t working out for me, I think it’s a chance for me to prove that when I keep doing it, eventually it will work out. I think some people fail, and it puts them in a position to shy away from it and kind of let it go.

“And then you have people who really believe. I don’t know how to explain it: Some people are just believers. You just do, or you don’t. And I’m one of them.”

How else could a boy who shot at a milk crate eventually make it to a list of the greatest NBA players of all time?

“I was surprised,” Lillard said of being selected. “And it’s a great accomplishment. But I’m in the prime of my career, and I feel like I still have a lot to give and a lot of room to grow. It’s a great honor, and I’m not looking past it like it’s nothing. It’s a big deal, and I appreciate it, but I have a lot that I still feel like I need to accomplish.”

Career stats#: G: 682, Pts.: 24.7 , Reb.: 4.2, Ast.: 6.6, FG%: .439, FT%: .893, Win Shares: 92.3, PER: 22.4

The Athletic NBA 75 Panel points: 127 | Hollinger GOAT Points*: 76.1

Accolades: Rookie of the Year (’13), six-time All-NBA, six-time All-Star, Player of the Seeding Games (’20), Olympic gold (’21), NBA 75 Team

#Through the 2020-21 season

*A rating of a player’s accumulated accomplishments at the highest levels, based mostly on comparable historical factors, determined heavily but not completely by contemporary evaluations (i.e. awards and All-Star selections). Emphasis is given to the most outstanding achievements — MVP award shares, All-NBA teams, and production above and beyond what is typically an All-Star level.

(Illustration: Wes McCabe / The Athletic; Photo: Hannah Foslien / Getty Images)

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