Ge Blakes

Damian Lillard says young NBA stars are more talented than ever, but are being handed everything before earning it “When I came in the league, Jason Kidd was starting for the Knicks, Grant Hill, Kurt Thomas, Kenyon Martin. It was real older dudes in the league.” “I played with real vets. It was a lot of stuff that I learned about being a point guard, how to lead, from Mo Williams and Earl Watson and Jared Jeffries, and they didn’t even play. It was just the way that they showed me how stuff had to be done. I had no choice but to respect the game. The word I was looking for is entitlement.” “When I came in the league, you had to earn, not just what you get from the team or the respect, you had to earn your space on the team. It was no, ‘Oh, you’re the sixth pick of the draft. It’s your team.’ What is this ‘your team’ stuff? Now the biggest difference is you don’t have that veteran presence.” “You’ve got players who are more talented than ever coming into the league. They’re getting picked one, two, three, four, five. They’re making more money than those picks ever made.” “Now you’re giving them the keys to the franchise, and there’s nobody there to really let them know, ‘You’re super talented, but you’ve got to earn stuff around here. You’ve got to earn your way.’” “They come in and everything is just given to them from the beginning. That affects how they are, the way they play. They play for themselves. They play for stats. They think that they’re LeBron James when they make an All-Star game or get a max contract.”