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Getty Portland Trail Blazers guard Damian Lillard
Portland Trail Blazers guard, Damian Lillard is on top of the basketball world right now.
Many are taking note.
Just ask NBA Hall of Famer, Jason Kidd.
Kidd, like Lillard represent Oakland, California and if you’re keeping score at home, Gary Payton, also a Oakland representer joins Kidd in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.
Recently, Kidd was asked who the King of Oakland is.
His answer? It was gracious!
“It’s a great question, a great debate, but I would vote for Lillard,” said Kidd via the San Francisco Chronicle.
Kidd also thinks Lillard’s Portland Trail Blazers could win the NBA title.
“Nobody’s really talking about them,” he said.
“They’re playing at a very high level. Lillard is playing at a very high level. If you’re healthy and shooting the ball the way they are, they can beat anybody.”
Kidd joins a litany of NBA royalty singining Lillard and the Blazers’ high praises.
“At his position, he is the number one guard in the league right now,” Portland Trail Blazers legend, Bonzi Wells told NBA scribe Landon Buford.
“What I love about Dame, he does so much for the community, he raps, a family guy and loyal to the soil that he grew up in.”
Wells played for Trail Blazers for six seasons, where he averaged 13.3 points and 4.7 rebounds per game.
Wells is in awe of Lillard. “He puts the work in on the court and isn’t all about talking with him,” he told Landon Buford.
“He goes out there and performs. That is what I respect about him. With that being said, that puts him above all guards in my opinion. What he did in that First Round [in the NBA Playoffs] against Paul George; who I know is a great defender and Russell Westbrook, who is a competitor; but he was able to put on a show like no other. That put him on the top of my list after that series.”
The Blazers are in Round 2 of the NBA Playoffs, against the Denver Nuggets.
These two teams finished within one game of each other during the 2018-19 NBA regular season. The Nuggets wrapped up the year with a 54-28 record while the Blazers were 53-29, earning a tiebreaker for the No. 3 seed over the Houston Rockets.
NBA Hall of Famer, Charles Barkley also believes Portland is going to the NBA Finals.
“I like Portland in the Finals,” Barkley told me.
“With [Damian] Lillard and [CJ] McCollum. The addition of Rodney Hood and Enes Kanter. I like them in the West.”
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Jason Kidd Offers Eye-Opening Comment on Blazers’ Damian Lillard