Lippi on Lillard: Portland point guard's high school head coach on his career and growth

Damian Lillard, the starting point guard for the Portland Trail Blazers and one of Oakland’s favorite sons, is returning to The Town for the Western Conference Finals in what will be either the final or second-to-last series for the Warriors at Oracle Arena. 

Lillard, who played at Oakland High School for his junior and senior season before going to Weber State, also played one year (2005-06) at St. Joseph Notre Dame in Alameda, the alma mater of Hall of Famer Jason Kidd.

I talked with the head coach at St. Joes, Don Lippi, who recently broke the Northern California record for wins by a head coach in Northern California with his 850th in Feb. 2018, about Lillard and his development since his year at St. Joes. 

Lippi has coached high school basketball in the Bay Area for 40 years, 18 at St. Joes, taking home four state championships at SJND, most recently in 2016. He has also coached at Skyline High and several other programs and has seen the likes of Damian Lillard, Jason Kidd and Gary Payton, among others, either on his team or on the opposing bench. 

He came and played with you guys in his sophomore year, but he left after a year. Why did he leave? Was it a playing time thing?

“I never figured out the answer, but it probably was a playing time thing. He was a freshman at Arroyo [high school] in San Leandro, and then he transferred to St. Joes.

He’s 15 years old, so we put him on varsity, which is a pretty big jump for us. So he’s on the bench, and he’s playing behind two seniors. That was our decision. You know, I liked the kid. I used to give him rides. I remember he loved the movie Transformers. He used to go, ‘Transssssformeeeeers.’ We had a good relationship and everything… he just said he was transferring. Probably because he didn’t start for us. And he started at Arroyo. He would have started for us, the next year. And we probably would have won the state championship (St. Joes won the state title in 2004, two years before Lillard came).

“He left us about 5’9”, a little pudgy little guy, and he wasn’t playing at the level where he should be starting on varsity. The good thing about that is that really motivated him. I think up to that point, everything – he got starting at Arroyo. *Boom* right off the bat, and then *boom* now he’s not starting here. And it kinda kicked him, pissed him off, well probably not pissed him off but he probably said, “shoot that’s not fair, I should be starting.” But, why weren’t you starting? Was it your defense, was it your effort? And all of a sudden, he got better and he started to grow. And junior year I saw him play and then senior year he came back and played us here. Now he’s 6’2”, so they came back and they beat us pretty good… it showed me he put his time in to do what would get him to the position where he was starting varsity on a good team.”

One thing that’s always impressed me about him is his ruthlessness and his persistence, nothing ever seems to keep him down.

“Nobody recruited him out of high school, except one school. Weber State. So that’s kind of a slap in the face too. All of his friends were being recruited by all these schools he didn’t get recruited by, so he said, ‘I’ll show you.’ And he did that. And he became one of the top picks in the draft. He gets in the NBA and he doesn’t make an all-star team. He doesn’t even make the all-rookie team... I remember one year he played Chris Paul, three point guards that were drafted right where he was. And he dropped 30 on all of ‘em. And then he doesn’t make the Olympic team. So whenever he doesn’t make something, he works harder to get there. I say this started here. The first time he didn’t get to be the top dog, he said, ‘okay, I’m gonna do this.’ And thank God he did. And what I’m really impressed about him now is, like, if you’re gonna put your emphasis on stopping me, I’m gonna let him score. And it doesn’t bother him. He just wants to win. His other guard goes off for 35, and Dame is good for that. ‘Oh, you’re gonna put two guys on me? I’ll give it to him.’ The thing he’s doing way better now than he was doing then was playing defense.”

The defense, was it a size thing? An effort thing?

“A little bit of both. Defense takes a lot of effort, and now he’s playing well defensively. A little while ago, he stripped [Stephen] Curry, he was one-on-one and he dove on the ball and hit it to get it free. Now all those things he’s starting to learn now, this is another improvement. This is recent. His tag was the defense. I heard him say that the other day. ‘My thing was I wasn’t good on defense.’ So now he’s starting to figure it out.

“I asked Jason [Kidd] the other day, “who do you think is the best guard out of Oakland?” Cause you have Gary Payton and all of that. And he said ‘I think it might be Damian Lillard.’ And that’s Jason Kidd saying that. He said when it’s all said and done, because you have to put some championships on the board to get that. His demeanor is so, so solid. And you look at guys after the game, and you see CJ McCollum sitting on the podium like this [slouched over], and Dame will answer any question you want. And intelligently. He’s really developed as a human being, and as a basketball player.”

His big thing is his shooting ability, and his ability to go off in bursts. Did you see any of that when he was here or was he still developing that too?

“Well, he wasn’t strong enough to make those long shots. But he was a good shooter, he could handle the ball. But it was, you know, it’s not your turn right now. Since then I’ve played freshmen as the starter… the kid that was starting in front of him that year was a senior made first-team all-league. He didn’t go on to play pro basketball, but. And what does it say to your seniors if this guy comes in brand new and is starting? It would be different if he was dominating, but he wasn’t dominating. As human beings, your body changes. His body, unbelievably. He went from 5’9” to 6’3”, as a senior.”

You look at a guy like Zion [Williamson], who is massive and has been for a while. That’s one thing versus a guard. It was the same thing with Curry, grow into your body and their abilities. But it creates that drive. It creates that, “I’ve been doubted my whole life” attitude.

“Sometimes that’s what you need, to get a little kick in the butt. If you get through easily, it’s not a challenge and you don’t work as hard. Cause there are other guys coming down the road from different states that are doing work a little bit harder than you are and all of a sudden you run into them, and you go “ooh, I thought I was good.” So, I think he learned that at an early age.”

He has a little flair to his game but also has that attitude. Do you think that comes from the area or is that just him?

“The area. That’s why he’s got 0 on his jersey. I mean, the OAL. I coached the OAL for five years at Skyline. It's territorial. And they go after it. Not just to play in it, to live in the city. To be able to survive in the neighborhoods you can hang out in, it's pretty tough. Gary Payton was the big one, the talker. He was at Skyline. He’s got that little jaw, the bite… the glove. My son played for him, he was the sponsor of the team. And he would tell the coach what to do. I was at a game one time at UC Berkeley, and his dad was in the stands. He’s [Gary Payton’s father] called Mr. Mean. That’s where he [Gary] got it from. But Mr. Payton had a drink. And the bear [UCB mascot] bumped him and he spilled his drink, and he almost took him apart. They had to separate him, he was about to kill the damn bear. But that’s the toughness that Gary had. Jason wasn’t tough but he was strong. He didn’t play in the OAL but he played with a lot of those guys in the summer. Damian does the same thing. It’s just a little edge you have to have. That’s a different thing.”

How did he, and how does he compare to other guys that you have coached and that have come through this program?

“Well, it was here for such a short stint. He’s at the highest level right now. I was at Skyline when Jason Kidd was here. He was supposed to come to Skyline because the school was right by his house, but the coach here convinced him to come to St. Joes. 

“But I would say he [Damian] probably made the biggest jump of any player I’ve seen. Jason Kidd was good in the eighth grade, he was dominating people in the eighth grade. Playing with men. And the coach for Cal-Berkeley goes, ‘wow, he could play for us right now.’ Even NBA guys were saying, ‘woo, who is this kid?’ Because he was physically developed, Jason was a strong man. He was 19 when he graduated. So he was a lot older than everybody. We played him when he was a sophomore, at Skyline, and he was a man amongst boys. Gary Payton, he’s just so tough. He would intimidate you. Literally, intimidate you, get right in your face. And Damian wasn’t like that, I think he had more skill than Gary, but Gary had that attitude that he got from his dad. He played with Hook Mitchell and all those guys, always in the streets playing. So he was really, really tough to get where he went. He got a ring too [with the Heat]. But we had Alex Harris, who just retired after playing overseas. And he played at UCSB and he was pretty good when he was here. But not at the level Damian is. Jason was so mature when he was here, he was two years older. So it’s hard to compare those kids. Damian, did he make the Olympics?”

You know, I’m not sure. But I know last year was the first time he had been an all-star in a while and the first first-team All-NBA, because Curry was hurt the whole season but still. He’s only made a few all-star teams, but again I think it just builds his attitude.

“Some people get intimidated, resigned to it. He lives off that, thrives off that.”

Yeah, like that wave when he hit that shot against the Thunder.

“That was probably one of the best moments of his life. You got 6-foot-8, NBA all-star. And to have the confidence to wait down to one second. So there was no chance of getting another shot. And you saw his dad jump off the bench too… He comes back all the years, ‘I didn’t play here, I didn’t get recruited in college, I didn’t make this team, but now look at me now?’ And he’s not bragging about it, he’s just like, ‘I’ll just do it.’ I saw some of his videos, he works hard over the summer. And the kids on this team [Portland] seem to love him… You’re not gonna intimidate him. In the all-star game even he popped off some big shots. It takes courage to even take those shots.”

It’s been a huge surge recently, with guys like Lillard and Steph Curry and James Harden, guys shooting from really far out. Do you see any of that seep out on your team, at this level?

“Most of these kids can’t reach it that far. With accuracy. We have an NBA line at our court, cause Steph Curry’s camp was here. So we had to put in an NBA line. So sometimes they get confused, shoot behind the NBA line.  Its three or four more feet. It doesn’t make that much difference. If you got a good form, you just have to put a little more emphasis on it. But I don’t like the game, I can’t even watch Houston. He’ll sometimes dribble 30 times before doing anything. You remember the Celtics [in the 80s] with their motion offense or the Bulls with the triangle. You get caught up in a Houston series and the way they do it. But I’m an old timer so I like the, the Celtics and Lakers are my favorite games. To watch Simmons. Philadelphia, come on. You got a 6’10” center who can’t shoot? The kids are getting so big now, and they’re so strong. They’re developing at such a young age. They’re getting trainers in the sixth grade, seventh grade. Like Zion is ridiculous, what these guys are doing is ridiculous. They just had the NFL Draft, teams were calling Zion like, ‘we’re gonna draft you right now.’