The majority of the NBA stars come from reputed college programs like Duke etc, but Damian Lillard is certainly an outlier in this department.
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Drafted with the 6th pick in the 2012 draft by the Portland Trail Blazers, ‘Dame Dolla’ was touted as one of the top point guards of the draft. But unlike other top players like Anthony Davis and Bradley Beal, who came up from programs like Kentucky, Damian Lillard came from a little college team called the Weber State Wildcats.
Lillard certainly wasn’t the media’s favorite child back in his young playing career. Only seen as a three-star recruit in high school by 247Sports, top college programs were hard to come by for Dame. But a young Lillard was determined to excel and enrolled with his hometown college Weber State.
In Weber, Lillard truly saw a massive jump in his skill set over the years. Starting off with averages of nearly 11 points, 3 assists, and 4 rebounds per game, Dame struggled to find his footing initially. But the Blazers’ superstar never lost confidence that he would make it to the NBA.
Damian Lillard credits his biggest source of confidence was how delusional he was
Lillard recently made an appearance in the Club Shay Shay podcast with Shannon Sharpe. There the 33-year-old revealed why he was unfazed about making it to the NBA despite playing in a lesser-known program like Weber State.
“My biggest that was probably my biggest strength is how delusional I was at that point. When I showed up on campus, I literally was like, I’m gonna go to the league. I never thought like how many people made it from Weber state.”
Not only that, Lillard also revealed his initial struggles when he started out with Weber. “Then I got there and you know I realized that I didn’t work hard enough and I didn’t play hard enough, I didn’t play fast enough. I started to realize like man, ‘this is a little harder than I thought.'”
But ultimately it worked out pretty well for Lillard. Despite a slow start, Lillard picked up in his sophomore season. Averaging more than 19 points per game, the guard looked all set to take college ball by storm.
This certainly showed in his production as well as for the 2011-12 season, Dame averaged a whopping 24.5 points, 4 assists, and 5 rebounds per game. Undoubtedly, these numbers have translated in the NBA as well.
An excellent scorer and an underrated passer, Lillard is now one of the top guards in the game and is a talismanic figure for the Trail Blazers.
