Opinion: How to say goodbye to an NBA superstar

Sam Mowe

Mowe is publisher of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. He lives in Portland.

The best sports moment I ever witnessed in person was Portland Trail Blazer Damian Lillard’s playoff series-winning 37-foot three-pointer at the buzzer against the Oklahoma City Thunder in 2019. As time was running out, all of us realized that Lillard wasn’t going to do the expected by driving to the basket. He was going to shoot it from deep. Very deep.

My brother and I, standing in the nosebleeds, instinctively reached for each other without taking our eyes off the ball. As it flew through the air, 20,000 of us held our breath in suspended disbelief. When it dropped through the net, electricity pulsed through the arena. We jumped up and down, enveloping ourselves in an ecstatic group hug with complete strangers.

After the game, the audacity of Lillard’s move led his defender Paul George to infamously call it “a bad shot.” The Bad Shot revealed so much of what is good about sports: unscripted, unpredictable moments which can lead to improbable experiences of transcendence. In his book “Playing in the Zone: Exploring The Spiritual Dimensions of Sports,” writer Andrew Cooper calls this often unacknowledged power of sport its “secret life.” With his iconic shot, Lillard let the secret out. The deep shot immediately aroused deep feelings throughout Rip City. And, for long-suffering Blazer fans, those feelings were positive.

Lillard delivered that late-game magic so often during his career that we gave it a name: “Dame Time.” No deficit was ever too large, and it was never too late. With Lillard, crunch time became a free-flowing ritual that could reveal the significance of time itself. It’s always running out; what are you going to do with it? Whether he was making The Bad Shot, dropping 71 points in regulation, or setting an NBA playoff record for most 3-pointers in a game (a performance that fellow NBA star Kevin Durant called “a spiritual experience”), Lillard would look out at the crowd and tap his wrist, reminding us all that he played his best when it mattered most.

And now Dame Time is over, at least in Portland. After 11 seasons of longshot triumphs, Lillard requested a trade and is playing for the Milwaukee Bucks. As lifelong Blazer fans, how can we say goodbye to someone who has meant so much to us?

This question is intensified because, in addition to his clutch play, Lillard was rare among NBA superstars in his loyalty to Portland. He often reiterated his desire to remain with the team for his entire career and tantalized Rip City by daring to utter our collective far-fetched dream of a championship. “I can’t express my desire and how bad I want to win it,” Lillard once said to The Athletic. “I want that more than anything. Not just to say I won a championship. But I want to do it in this city.”

As sports fans, we aren’t used to our star players caring about the team as much as we do. I suspect it was this quality of Lillard’s character, even more so than the on-court heroics, that makes it hard to say goodbye. But while even beloved players go, it’s the team that remains.

There is seemingly a growing number of fans who root for individual players and not the team, but that approach has never been possible for me. The joy of being a fan has been experiencing the ups and downs of the seasons against the eternal backdrop of the team. Like we do in life, fans feel a range of emotions through our teams—hope, promise, disappointment, and loss. And as Blazer fans, there is so much loss. But, unlike life, there’s always next year.

Immediately after draining his series-winner against the Oklahoma City Thunder, Lillard delighted fans and created an instant meme by waving goodbye to the opposing team. Like the shot itself, the wave was cold-blooded and self-possessed. “The series was over, that was it,” Lillard said, emotion brimming just beneath the surface. “I was just waving goodbye to them.”

Looking for a sense of closure around Lillard’s departure, I recently bought tickets to his first game back in Portland, set for Jan 31. I want to stand up together with the rest of Rip City and offer an ovation to a Blazer legend who let us in on the secret life of sports. Then I hope to watch him lose to a Blazer team that is suddenly, and surprisingly, more mine than his. And, finally, I want to wave goodbye to Lillard. Not so coolly like he did to the Oklahoma City Thunder, but as a tribute to the moments that mattered most – the Dame Time –that we spent together.