Damian Lillard Details What It Means to Play on Christmas Day

Christmas Day didn’t end with one extra present forDamian Lillardand thePortland Trail Blazers. Instead they retreated from Utah with a loss in a game that was mostly in full control by theJazzafter the first quarter. However poor the day ended, Lillard detailed what it meant to play on Christmas Day withEric Woodyard of the Deseret Newsprior to the game.

First, he beamed about celebrating his first Christmas with his son, Dame Jr.:

“I got up this morning with him and we was up for about two hours just messing around with high energy,” Lillard described during the Blazers’ shootaround. “He don’t know what today is, so he kind of just got up, he was playing with all his toys and that was it. It was like any other morning.”

Then Lillard went into what playing on Christmas meant to him, something he’s wanted for years:

“It’s pretty cool. My whole career, I’ve been wanting to play on Christmas,” said Lillard, a product of Weber State University. “I’ve been telling the league like, ‘Man, let us get a Christmas game.’ I was hoping it would’ve been in Portland but obviously this is an exclusive thing, it’s an honor to be able to play on Christmas.”

You can read more from Woodyard’s piecehere.