Portland Trail Blazers’ Damian Lillard motivated by Team USA snub

Portland Trail Blazers’ point guard Damian Lillard was left off of Team USA in the FIBA World Cup and is using that snub as motivation

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Portland Trail Blazers’ point guard Damian Lillard joined Team USA for training camp but was cut from the team before they headed to Spain for the FIBA World Cup.

Now, Damian Lillard is using that snub as motivation.

”Definitely, [it will motivate me],” Lillard said via Alex Kennedy of Basketball Insiders. “The best part was just being able to compete against top players every day. You don’t get that opportunity a lot of times, so I was thankful for that. … That was the best thing that I could take away from it. You usually don’t get to play against D-Rose, Steph, Kyrie and James Harden every day, but that’s the opportunity I got and I think I got a lot better from it.

“But I also felt like it was them telling me that I wasn’t good enough. I’ve always been one to throw wood on the fire anytime that I got the opportunity and once I was turned away from making the team, I basically took it as, ‘You’re not good enough.’ That was just another reason for me to go back to work and keep trying to improve as a player.”

Damian Lillard is already a special player if he can take it to the next level, expect the Blazers to make noise in the postseason again.

Damian Lillard averaged 20.7 points, 5.6 assists and 3.5 rebounds while shooting 42.4% from the field, 39.4% from beyond the arc and 87.1% from the free throw line last season. n his two-year career, Damian Lillard has averaged 19.9 points, 6.0 assists and 3.3 rebounds per game while shooting 42.7% from the field, 38.1% from three and 85.9% from the charity stripe

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