Long before Damian Lillard became the face of the Portland Trail Blazers, an NBA Rookie of the Year and a nine-time All-Star, one of his high school coaches was not convinced he would even remain on the team.
Lillard revisited that chapter of his story on X on August 25, responding to a post about the tiny percentage of basketball players who ultimately reach the NBA.
“My high school coach as a sophomore at St Joes broke these #s down to me and asked me if I thought I would be one of them,” Lillard wrote. “I was on the bench that whole season and he told me I prob wouldn’t be on the team the next year. I said yea and he smiled and chuckled right in my face … true story … you just never know.”
It is a striking story to revisit now.
At 36, Lillard is preparing for another improbable chapter: returning to NBA action with Portland after missing the entire 2025-26 season while recovering from a torn left Achilles.
Damian Lillard Has Told the Story Before
Lillard was a sophomore at St. Joseph Notre Dame High School in Alameda, California, at the time of the exchange.
His struggles there were not revisionist history created after he became an NBA star. Lillard discussed the experience during his rookie season with the Blazers, telling Jim Rome that he sometimes played only two or three minutes and occasionally did not enter the game at all.
“I wanted to play in the NBA as much as anybody,” Lillard said at the time, according to a transcript published by the Trail Blazers. But after failing to find consistent playing time at St. Joseph Notre Dame, Lillard transferred and said he eventually “found my place.”
Years later, Lillard gave Andscape an even more detailed account. He identified coach Don Lippi and recalled Lippi laying out the long odds of progressing from high school basketball all the way to the NBA.
Lillard said he remained convinced he would get there anyway.
“That motivated me a lot,” Lillard told Andscape in 2016. “I really believed I was going to make it to the NBA.”
Lillard eventually transferred to Oakland High School and then landed at Weber State, hardly the conventional launching point for an NBA superstar. Portland selected him No. 6 overall in the 2012 draft.
The rest of the résumé makes the old conversation look almost surreal.
Lillard’s Next Blazers Chapter Is Approaching
Lillard spent his first 11 NBA seasons with Portland before a 2023 trade sent him to the Milwaukee Bucks. He returned to the Blazers in July 2025 on a three-year deal reportedly worth $42 million after Milwaukee waived him.
He never appeared in a game last season as Portland took a patient approach to his Achilles recovery.
Now his comeback is getting close.
NBA.com included Lillard among the prominent players scheduled to return during the 2026-27 season. Portland opens its schedule at Moda Center against the Phoenix Suns on October 21, creating the possibility that Lillard will play his first regular-season game in a Blazers uniform since 2023 on his home floor.
He will return to a dramatically different Portland team. The Blazers reached the playoffs last season and enter 2026-27 with Lillard, Deni Avdija, Jrue Holiday and offseason addition Ja Morant among the prominent names on the roster.
There are legitimate basketball questions about what Lillard will look like at 36 after Achilles surgery and how Portland will divide minutes in a crowded backcourt.
But his August 25 post offered another reminder of why writing off Lillard has always carried some risk.
As a teenager, he was sitting on a high school bench listening to the odds of ever reaching the NBA.
More than a decade after becoming one of the league’s defining guards, he is still playing.
And, as Lillard put it: “you just never know.”
Blazers Star Damian Lillard Revisits Coach’s Warning Before NBA Rise