> “I told these dudes: this is the time when you find your true identity,” Lillard said. “It’s not when you win a couple games and everything feels good. It’s in the moments when it would be easy to walk away — like now, we have some injuries, a rough patch, a tough schedule — but this is the time when you make a decision to march forward and up.”
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> Lillard was quick to point out that what the Blazers are going through now — the injuries, their coach being placed on leave amid a gambling probe, two buzzer-beating losses — won’t be solved by any rah-rah, inspirational speech from him. The turnaround has to come from within by building good habits, supporting each other, and trusting that hard work produces good results.
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> “Hey, we might lose five more games, but what matters is not what we say to the media,” Lillard said. “it’s how we walk into the locker room and talk to each other, or whether we get to practice and it’s quiet and nobody says anything … like, you gotta have that feeling of ‘Man, this sucks.’ But you have to have the actions of ‘this is not breaking me.’