Damian Lillard is enjoying the finest season of his six-year NBA career, and credits the work he puts in during the summer for his improvement as a player.
“I think I’m probably playing at a higher level than I have in my entire career right now,” Lillard told reporters Wednesday.
“But I always said ‘I get better.’ I take the right steps in the summer time to try to figure out what I can do to be a better player.”
Lillard’s name has been mentioned in the MVP conversation, and his Trail Blazers riding a League-best ten game winning streak.
Portland is holding on to the third seed in the Western Conference, and the organization is doing its best to ignore the streak.
Per The Oregonian:
“What streak?” coach Terry Stotts said.
While you see an exhilarating and hope-inspiring hot streak, the Blazers see business as usual.
“I think in the past, when we’ve had success, it’s always been kind of a sigh of relief,” Lillard said. “We get a few games over .500 and it’s like, ‘All right, we did good.’ And then there’s kind of a let up. I don’t think it was ever intentional, but it was natural. We weren’t at the level we needed to be all the time, mentally and with playing or approaching things with the purpose we needed to. That’s been a part of our growth. During this entire streak, the focus has been there.”
