There's another Lillard story you should know. It took place off the court. About 35,000 feet above one, actually. It was November 2017, and the Blazers were flying home from Sacramento. They'd just fallen to the previously 3-11
Kings. The loss dropped
Portland to just one game above .500. It was another disappointing night in what was turning into a disappointing season and another disappointing performance from the team's starting center, Jusuf Nurkic.
Portland had traded for Nurkic, a 7'0", 275-pound house of a man, back in February. The hope was that he'd shore up the group's interior defense while also providing an injection of offense around the paint. And sometimes he did. But he was just 23 then and coming off a rough three-year stretch in
Denver in which he had been bounced in and out of the lineup. His confidence often waned. He could be easily derailed.
This had been one of those nights. He'd missed five of his seven shots. He'd looked despondent at halftime, and so that night, before the Blazers boarded their plane, Lillard approached Evan Turner, a guard who typically sat next to Nurkic on team flights.
"Switch seats with me," he told Turner. Lillard spent the next 90 minutes sitting alongside Nurkic. Reviewing film. Offering encouragement. But also admonishing his propensity to brood.
"We need you," Lillard told him. "And you have to figure out how to give us what we need.
"But," he added, "I'm here for you, whatever you need."
Nurkic scored 14 points the next night. He finished the season with the
best Player Efficiency Rating of his career to go along with a scoring average of 14.3 points per game.
"Every time I've ever needed him, he's been there for me," Nurkic says. "Even if I call him in the middle of the night, he's always there."
