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What do you do when someone loves you? You sell them a car.
Damian Lillard, the Portland Trail Blazers’ star point guard, had a problem: He was beloved by the entire Portland metro area, and it was very hard for him to go from person to person, selling them one car after another. People everywhere were disappointed. Did Dame really love us, love me, if he wasn’t selling me a car? But a few years back, a novel synthesis emerged to solve this problem:
Now, EVERYONE in Portland can know FOR CERTAIN that Damian Lillard loves them, because they can buy a car from him, or the team of friendly salespeople representing him at beautiful McMinnville’s premier hot spot for new and used Toyota vehicle purchases, DAMIAN LILLARD TOYOTA.
Damian Lillard Toyota has everything you want from a car dealership. It has one of those things that measure your vertical leap, a plexiglass display case with all of Lillard’s signature sneakers in it, a pop-a-shot, branded doughnuts, and like a thousand fine Japanese automobiles, all available for purchase.
But recently, the utopian parasocial dream that Damian Lillard Toyota represents, a pure and perfect love between city and player/car-dealership owner, has been threatened. You see, the Blazers suck now, and they will probably need a few years to be good again, what with the developing young talent lining their roster. Damian Lillard, who has both spent his entire pro career with the Blazers and done a lot of talking about liking Portland, wanting to stay here forever, not “running from the grind,” etc., has decided that he would rather not spend his basketball dotage mentoring third overall pick Scoot Henderson, has told the Portland Trail Blazers that he would prefer that the organization trade him to another team, preferably the Miami Heat, where he could immediately have a decent shot at playing for an NBA title.
Now, even though the Blazers have been terrible for two years straight, and there is no clear way out of this morass of their own making that doesn’t involve rebuilding, some people are shocked by this development because they sincerely believed that Dame loved Portland and would never leave. They are shaking, recalling the feelings they felt when their father, once the pillar of their life, sat them down and told them that he and their mom would be getting a divorce now, he would be moving to Tucson to work in a copper mine, and that even though they would see each other less, he would remember to call.
They recall the optimism that lined the moment, the sense that even though Dad was moving, it would still be the same. Then a darkness enters: They remember the first time they visited their dad in Tucson and met his “new friend” Janet. They recall attending Dad and Janet’s wedding, they remember Janet getting pregnant with their half-brother, and half-sister, and their other half-brother. They recall watching Dad get thinner, acquiring a new smile on his face that he never had when he was with you, back in Portland. The feelings of inferiority invade their minds: Why couldn’t Dad be happy with me? Was I not good enough?
They remember when they turned 16 and they got their license. Dad, more distant than ever, a supervisor at the copper mine, wholly devoted to taking care of his new family (never spending time at the bar, like he did back in Portland), invites them to Tucson. They get dinner. It is stilted, but he is trying his hardest. After dinner, he takes them home, where they see a new car in the driveway. Surprise, he says. I got you a car. Their fists ball up. The rage of the last 10 years comes exploding out of them. You think this makes up for it? They are screaming in front of their half-siblings. You think you can just buy me a car and that I will forget that you left me, went to Tucson, shacked up with Janet, ignored me, figured that you paid your child support and that was all you needed to do? Why couldn’t I make you happy, Dad? Why wasn’t I good enough?
In the haze of these feelings, they drive past Damian Lillard Toyota. Another man, running from the grind of love, looking for happiness with his new family, his real family, trying to offload a car onto you. Dozens of people, all at once, pull over to the side of that lonely McMinnville road. Their hands are shaking, they’re crying. Why does everyone leave, and then try to give you a car, either as a gift or under a very reasonable low-interest monthly payment structure?
A rage overtakes your heart. I will NOT let this happen to me again. Eventually I buried my feelings deep enough that I acquiesced to my father’s—no, my DAD’s—pathetic peace offering. I took the car and drove it back to Portland. But never again, I say. I will never buy a car from another man who abandoned me, who abandoned us. I will NOT step foot on the campus of Damian Lillard Toyota EVER AGAIN.
The organization will do what needs to be done here. Getting back decent value for an elite player who will be making $60 million in his mid-30s will honestly be a tough task—only contenders will want him, and they will have very little in the way of future assets to offer. Try not to blame them when it goes down like this. Neil Olshey, the team’s previous GM, did a really bad job building a decent team around Dame, and the consequence of building a bad team around a star is the star asking out, eventually. The sick parasocial nature of this whole thing, Dame’s need for a loving public that resided outside of winning and losing, and his feeding off of the Portland metro’s kind of pathetic desire to have a player who gave them a percentage of the affection they gave to him probably made the partnership last two years longer than it should have. CJ McCollum getting shipped out was the sign that this thing was over, but the sort of affection that makes novelty Toyota dealerships possible kept it going for two miserable years after that. Dad needs to leave, so he can sire your new brothers and sisters somewhere else. Maybe next time, try to remember that he’s just a man.