Damian Lillard Believes This Generation Of NBA Players “Feels Entitled”

Veteran point guard Damian Lillard, who is in his eleventh season in the NBA, said today’s generation of NBA players feels entitled.

The Portland Trailblazer hooper made a pit stop on JJ Redick’s The Old Man and the Three podcast, where he shared his views on younger players in the league. One of the reasons Lillard believes younger players feel entitled is because of a lack of leadership in the NBA.

“When I came in the league, like Jason Kidd was starting for the Knicks and Grant Hill and Kurt Thomas and Kenyon Martin. It was real older dudes in the league. I played with Jared Jeffries, he was 40, 41 or something. Earl Watson was 40 when I played with him,” Lillard said on The Old Man and The Three.

He continued, “I played with real vets, and it was a lot of stuff I learned, like being a point guard or how to lead from Mo Williams and Earl Watson and Jared Jeffries. And they didn’t even play, it was just the way they showed me how stuff had to be done, I had no choice but to respect the game. I didn’t have – the word I was looking for is entitlement. Like, when I came in the league, you had to earn not just what you get from the team or the respect – you had to earn your space on the team.

“There was no, ‘You’re the sixth pick in the draft, it’s your team.’ What is this ‘your team’ stuff? I think now, the biggest difference is you don’t have that veteran presence,” Lillard continued. “So you got players who are more talented than ever coming into the league, they’re getting picked 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, they’re making more money than those picks ever made, so not only that, now you’re giving them the keys to the franchise.”

He added, “There’s nobody there to really let them know ‘You’re super-talented, but you’ve gotta earn stuff around here. You gotta earn your way.’ They come in and everything is given to them from the beginning. So that affects how they are, the way they play. They play for themselves, they play for stats. They think they’re LeBron James when they make an All-Star Game or get a max contract. It’s just different. I don’t know how to completely put it together, but the NBA I play in now is not the NBA I came into.”

Watch Damian Lillard on The Old Man and The Three in its entirety below.