/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/18177619/20121123_pjc_sx3_422.0.jpg)
Adam Figman of Slam Magazine interviews Portland Trail Blazers guard Damian Lillard from EA Sports' headquarters in Florida. The reigning 2013 Rookie of the Year discusses video games and a bunch of other topics.
SLAM: You had an interesting tweet about young players placing too much value on getting buckets. What inspired that?
DL: There's a lot of younger guys from Oakland, from my area, guys that are in college that I follow on Twitter, and they're always talking about getting buckets. I kinda got a little bit irritated, because there are some guys-their team needs them to get buckets, but everybody can't get buckets. So I was just like, How are you valuable if your team doesn't need you to get buckets? What are you gonna do?
SLAM: Is that something you picked up during your rookie year?
DL: I mean, I realized that in college. But I've always kind of been in a role when my team needed me to get buckets. But at the same time, I know that if I ended up on a team where they didn't need me to, I'd still be a valuable player. So that's something that I wanted to put out there.
SLAM: What was your reaction to the Blazers signing Mo Williams?
DL: I thought that was a good pick-up. He's a veteran point guard. He's been on successful Playoff teams, he's been on bad teams and he's been around the League. There's a lot that I can learn from him and I can benefit from having him on the team with me.
Thanks to PonderGuy in the Fanshots.
-- Ben Golliver | benjamin.golliver@gmail.com | Twitter