Trail Blazers Describe ‘Uncomfortable’ Elevator Experience

On Tuesday, basically half of the Portland Trail Blazers’ roster was stuck in an elevator at a building owned by Emerson College in Boston for 30 minutes. The team got out just fine, but Blazers beat reporter Casey Holdahl had to get the story of what it was like on the inside.

Meyers Leonard detailed the overall composure of the team:

“We ended up being on the elevator about 30 minutes. When they were trying to manually, essentially, move us we kept dropping real hard, so that was pretty interesting. It was pretty hot, quite a few guys were uncomfortable, but as a veteran, I kept my cool and made sure everybody was good on the elevator.”

Damian Lillard cleared up the rumors that he was scared on the elevator, saying that it was just movie magic that made him look a little timid:

You looked like one of the more scared players on the elevator.

”That’s just the part of the video that they showed. That’s just the way it was edited. I was standing there like everybody else at first and then it was like, we gotta play tomorrow so I’m sitting down. And then it started getting hot and I was the smallest person in there, so I was like, we need to clear out some space for each other. There’s a lot of breath moving around up here. So I sat down.”

Were you scared? Nervous?

”I wasn’t scared, I could have sat in there like an hour or two longer. I would have been fine, but I was just like, are we going to get out of here? I heard the people trying to get us up and the elevator kept like shaking and going up and then dropping and I was like ‘I don’t know if they gonna get us out of here any time soon. I’m hungry!’ I don’t want to eat nobody.”

Lillard credited Evan Turner for providing entertainment as the team waited. Turner also took over the role of protecting rookie Gary Trent Jr.:

You seemed to be comforting Gary Trent Jr.

”Yeah, I saw his family on Monday in Cleveland, they told me to take care of him. When I saw the elevator stop I just made sure I played the big brother role, consoled him, told him everything was going to be fine. That was it, that’s what vets do.”

The entire piece by Holdahl is worth the read. Portland takes on the Boston Celtics Wednesday night at 5 p.m. PT.