“What Has Damian Lillard Ever Won?”: NBA Analyst Skip Bayless Hits Back

The Damian Lillard and Skip Bayless beef seems to be never-ending. Both have not held back in raising their voices against each other and making sure their side of their story is heard. It all began when Lillard missed two free-throws in Saturday’s match against the Los Angeles Clippers. He received a lot of jabs and backlash from the Clippers players and of course, Skip Bayless.

Lillard has been busy off-court handling the jabs from the players, Paul George and Patrick Beverley, on Instagram and making statements about Skip on Twitter. However, Bayless was not going to stay shut and responds to Damian’s uncalled for Tweets.

Damian Lillard is no LeBron James

After the game, Skip criticized Lillard’s “Dame time” and questioned his capability as a player after the Clippers game. This was not very well taken by Lillard, after which he took to twitter to bash Skip with multiple tweets. He mentioned that he would never respect Skip.

He also talks about a personal conversation between them on which apparently Skip was very different than what he stated later. The conversation was left for the audience’s imagination until Bayless decided to reveal the contents of the phone call.

On ‘Undisputed‘, where first Skip Bayless made comments on Lillard, is where he came to justify his stance. He started off by telling when exactly did all of this begin. He says,” This all started on the morning of May 27th when we were doing a show from home”. Skip talks about Damian’s statements made to Chris Haynes from Yahoo Sports, which came off very offensive to Bayless. ” He said he would go to the bubble but unless the NBA could devise a format that would give them a chance to make the playoffs, he was going to sit on the bench and watch these bubble games if he didn’t actually have a chance to actually make the playoffs”

After this, he talks about how Damian talks as if is LeBron James. “LeBron is obviously the face of this league and has earned the right to be the face of this league and I wondered out loud on TV to you, what exactly has Damian Lillard ever won to achieve this kind of stature in this league because seriously he’s won nothing,” Skip says that he doesn’t deny that Lillard is a good player but certainly not like LeBron.

Skip’s phone conversation

Now, Lillard finally reveals the conversation Damian made a reference to in his tweets. He says that he first got a text from Lillard that said,” what have you done to challenge what I have done?” After reading this message, Skip just dialed his number instantly. ” Right off the top, I tried to be civil with him though he was clearly pretty agitated and angry with me. But the first thing I explained to him was yeah I got really worked up. I was scathing in my commentary to you because we were in the middle of a pandemic.” 

“I was still dubious about basketball in the bubble,” said Skip. He finally gets to the crux and said,” What have you done to be that kind of spokesman for the league?” and quotes that Lillard’s response was ” He said since I came into the league I have been one of the clutches players of the league”.

The conversation went back and forth but became even more heated. He talks about Lillard’s biggest moment last year in the Conference Finals against the Golden State Warriors. Opening up the stats he says,” In the fourth quarter plus overtime, Damian Lillard went 8 of 26 that is 31% from the field and he shot 5 a 17 from the three-point line. That’s 29%. He was a -30.” 

“He was not clutch”. Also mentioning that the conversation definitely did not end well, as claimed by Damian on Twitter. Skip blatantly denies having any discussion with Damian on LeBron, as mentioned by him on Twitter.

Finally, Skip says that Lillard should prove him wrong and make him shut, but till then he will talk about all his mistakes and misses as and when he pleases.