A glow-in-the-dark universe

Host of Locked On Blazers, Mike Richman, on Damian Lillard's first game back in Portland, and how long it takes the homes we leave to become places we visit.

By the end of the night Damian Lillard stopped just short of saying he was glad it was over. He was. But he’s measured enough in front of a microphone and cameras that he knew not to say it outright.

After two days back, he felt the exhaustive weight of home. The burden of being the most important, popular, beloved Portland Trail Blazer some six months after he formally asked to stop being a Portland Trail Blazer.

Dame flew into town ahead of his new team because he needed to get back into the city and do the things that being Damian Lillard demands. An adidas event where they named a basketball court after him, a birthday celebration for his twin three-year olds, and a parade of media responsibilities.

On game day he woke up and drove his oldest son to school before he drove to shootaround. 

“It’s just been like being back home,” he said before the game. 

He has a house here. His kids live here. A bunch of his extended family does too. He hasn’t been gone long enough for this place to feel distant or foreign. It’s home in all the big ways. 

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When we go back to my parents house now, we sleep in my sister's old room. When you turn the lights off the glow-in-the-dark stars, moon and planets that were stuck to the ceiling in the late 1990s give off a decades old shine. My old bedroom has long since been converted to an office space. 

In its prime, the adornments in my sister’s bedroom weren’t just limited to the glow-in-the-dark skyscape on the ceiling. It was a full pre-Y2K teen wonderland with Got Milk? ads lining the walls, a Ken Griffey Jr. poster on the closet door and one of those beaded curtains hanging in the doorway. A couple decades later only the adhesive ceiling universe remains.

My parents still live in the house where I spent most of my childhood. Even sleeping in a bedroom that I probably spent all of 38 total minutes in prior to my 30th birthday, this is home. It’s home in all the important ways it needs to be. Even if the details change.

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Damian Lillard’s best skill is not an effortless 40-foot jump shot. It’s an uncanny sense of the moment. It’s why he grabbed the microphone and belted RIP CIIIIIITAY over the arena’s PA system organically when he sent the Rockets home in 2014. It’s why, a few months later, he made the split second decision that his clutch heroics needed signature branding, and on a whim debuted a defiant wrist tap on a December night in Oklahoma City. It’s why he baby-waved Bye Bye to Russell Westbrook and that same Thunder team a half decade later, and then circled around the arena floor to let the fans bask in it. 

He has always appreciated the moment.

But he prefers improv to scripted drama. So the anticipation of a big, strange, tender moment that not only had a script but two — yes two — tribute videos wasn’t going to seem right for Dame. He is the author of the biggest moments of the last decade of Trail Blazers basketball. In the signature moments of his career he has dictated the drama, fiercely grabbed control, and molded them as he pleased in real time. The second time he ended a playoff series with a walk-off three-pointer, he knew to stick around the court and let the roar of the crowd soak in. He knew what the moment meant to you so he let you sit with it.

Photo by Steph Chambers

He had no choice but to cede that space to others on Wednesday night for his return to Portland. He had to be part of the production, a script. It’s not that Dame isn’t tender, or capable of channeling big emotions. Those moments are just best delivered as ad-libs.

There was something imperfect about Damian Lillard accepting the love of thousands on someone else's terms. He still was showered in adulation, a minute-long embrace where the arena was filled with nothing but cheers. He could sit with appreciation, wave to the crowd, offer a double-thumbs up, make a heart with his hands as the cheers rained down from every inch of the building that was packed in anticipation of this exact scene. But a moment you can anticipate, in some ways, didn’t seem right to appreciate what Dame meant to this place. He is supposed to spring these on the crowd and dictate the pace. For one night, he was a passenger in his own moment.

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Eventually all that will be left of the Damian Lillard era will be the glow-in-the-dark universe he stuck to the ceiling. He hasn’t been gone long enough for a full redecoration.

He came home this week. To his house and his family and to the building that he spent 11 years constructing an all-time legacy in on his own terms. It was home in all the big, important ways. 

The details have changed. The Blazers roster is mostly made up of folks who never played with Lillard in a Blazers jersey. They’re navigating out of his shadow, taking down the bead curtains.

Going home is never going to be the same. It’s always going to be a place you left and then return to. When it was all nearly over on Wednesday night, Dame felt it. He admitted that the emotions of the night were draining. That’s why, when he sat up on the press conference stage, he stopped just short of saying he was thankful to be done with it all. 

Dame said he didn’t want closure from his first game back. He wasn’t looking to end a chapter or turn a page or whatever book-heavy metaphor you prefer. He keeps leaving the door open for a day when he plays in a Blazers jersey again. It’s a thought down the line, but a thought he’s happy to entertain in the abstract.

Portland will always feel like home in the big, important ways. But as the details change and circumstances shift and time slowly passes, you’re going to become a visitor. Even in the space you helped decorate.