The NBA season is still young and the clocks are already striking Dame Time. After Damian Lillard missed most of the 2021-22 season recovering from core surgery, the Portland Trailblazers’ star point guard returned to the court and put up two 41 point games, one of which was sealed with his trademark step-back deep three with 12 seconds left in the game.
For Lillard, it’s business as usual. He’s long been one of the most electric players in the league, famed for playoff buzzer beaters and a 61-point game (!) during the 2020 bubble. The Blazers suffered a rough season without their franchise anchor and along the way they traded his longtime friend and tag team partner CJ McCollum to the New Orleans Pelicans. Dame returns to a locker room of fresh new stars like Josh Hart, Anfernee Simons, and first-round draft pick Shaedon Sharp, a team built around his talents and fully intent on winning the Larry O’Brien trophy with their once-in-a-generation star at the steering wheel.
In his time off, Dame focused on rehab and, predictably, fine-tuning his skills in the gym. Lillard has long been one of the league’s more legendary workhorses and he was back in the weight room a mere few weeks after his surgery. He spent that stretch of time in his adoptive home of Portland hanging with his family and inking a deal with the sneaker e-commerce platform KicksCrew, where he's put together a capsule of his favorite selections from the site.
GQ caught up with Lillard to chat about how he takes care of his body through it all.
For Real-Life Diet, GQ talks to athletes, celebrities, and other high performers about their diet, exercise routines, and pursuit of wellness. Keep in mind that what works for them might not necessarily be healthy for you.
GQ: You’re coming off of a pretty lengthy layoff after core surgery last season. During the rehab process how did you change your diet and training?
Damian Lillard: I actually had my first rehab session the morning after surgery. But I would say I really started training maybe a month after the surgery, just getting in the weight room being more active. I wasn't really on the court other than just running full court, just kind of opening up my abductors again.
And then with my diet? I just ate a lot lighter. I did a food sensitivity test to see just how my body was responding to certain things that I liked, that I knew I was going to be eating. I used to eat a lot of sunflower seeds and I eat a lot of sushi. I’m a big fan of fried catfish, so I had all these things that I knew because I wasn't as active that I wouldn't be able to eat as much. I wouldn’t be able to go to certain restaurants as much or have my chef making certain things as often. At that point I was like, "All right, I'm going to just eliminate a few things." I can't be drinking wine, I can't be having a drink." I just started to just block things out so I could stay lean while I wasn't able to be on the court hard.
Once I was cleared—after maybe two months—to start doing light basketball activities, I’d been doing it for long enough that I was like, "All right, I'm just going try to keep it clean." And I've just kept doing that up to this point.
You’ve got a reputation for being one of the more relentless guys in the league when it comes to getting in work in the gym or on the court during practices. What has the regimen looked like during and post-rehab?
I do my strength and conditioning in the gym from 7 A.M. to 8:30, right after I get up. At 9:00 I leave that gym and I head to practice facility. When I’m there I work with my physical therapist and we just work on rehab. While we’re at it we’ll also try to address any nagging minor injuries and just stay on top of those. It’s not a super-hard session, it's just knocking these things out, giving him some time on my ankle or my quad tendon or whatever it might be. That’s usually like, 45 minutes.
From there I work with a speed and agility specialist. He comes from sports science so he puts my whole schedule together. With him it’ll be speed exercises or resistance running and stuff with the goal being getting my stride together and getting my stability and balance back and better. That’s another 45 minutes, but it's not strenuous, overly aggressive stuff. It's just good hard work.
What’s the rest of the day like after you wrap with him?
I get on the court and depending on how hard the morning workouts were, I might have a hard day on the court. Sometimes it's just a shooting day and some days it's just a light workout. There’s a lot of variation and it all depends on how my body’s feeling and what my team says I need. Some days I just work with my PT and then do some shooting. Other days I’ll just do all of them. That’s been my everyday since March.
How long have you been working with the speed and agility specialist?
I’ve been with him since March. He’s been really helpful in finding the balance of all the things I need to keep me sharp. He had my schedule organized all the way through the summer. Even with my vacation days, it was built in for me to train a certain way to where I would just work, work, work, work, work up until I left. So then I would be almost fatigued to the point where he’d be like, "All right, you got a five day trip and then take these days off." But it wasn't like I was backtracking, it was working to the point where my body needed the days off. They mapped out my training schedule to fit all of the times that I was going to be out of town or had to leave so that it wasn't like I was missing time from training.
Are you eating breakfast before those early-morning strength and conditioning sessions?
I mean, sometimes I don't eat breakfast. I might have a shake or I might just take some fruit with me out of the house, stuff like that. But it's usually super light. I'd say more than half of the days I don't eat at all, because I just, I feel fine not having breakfast. I'd rather get that first workout out the way and then maybe try to find something after that.
Does lunch tend to be on the heavier side to make up for the light breakfast?
Yeah, I usually have a really big lunch. I’ll keep it light in the morning, fruit or nothing at all. And then I’ll have ginger tea, fruit, and trail mix in between. At about 1 or 2 in the afternoon I’ll just have one big meal. It’ll be a big protein: chicken or something. And the meal itself is just big, too. It's just a lot of food to where it's like, this is my one big meal for the day. Some days I'm just going to eat a lot of sushi, you what I'm saying? I started out only eating fried sushi but now I’ll eat pretty much whatever’s there. Or just have some fish or a big mix of things, fruits, vegetables, carbs, whatever. The rest of the day I’ll just be snacking on nuts, have an electrolyte drink or a smoothie or something.
On game days how do your afternoons and evenings tend to play out in terms of training and food?
We shoot around in the morning. I’ll get into the gym and get on the PT table and do an activation where they just activate my ankles. I do these different motions against resistance, open up my hips and my adductors and stuff just to get my legs warm and ready to move—that way I'm not going out on the court feeling stiff.
Once the team gets together, we do our prep: just walking through how we’re going to cover the other team's offense and what we want to look for in our offense. We’ll get some shots up, move around, get in a little bit of light sweat. And then I go to the back, I get in the cold tub for 15 minutes and then shower. And then we usually have chefs in our practice facility kitchen. I'll go back there and I'll have me a stir fry. I’ll get it to go and eat it at home and then I take a nap.
After my nap, I wake up and take a Sprinter to the game. Again, it's like another activation, but it's more exertion on the court. 15 minute workout. Weight room for 10 minutes, just a quick lift to get going.
I actually get to chill a little from there and might watch a few of the games on the East Coast that started already in the back. Eventually it’s game time for us so we go out and do our thing.
What’s it like after the final buzzer? Are you doing much recovery work, getting some food back in your system, or hitting the cold tub again?
After the game I shower and do media and then I head home with my family. Once I get home, that's when I'll either stop and pick something up or have something pre-made ready for me when I get home.
I’ve got a playlist of just instrumentals that I'll play on the speaker of my room and I'll just stretch out a little bit on the floor and wind down. The thing is, once I get home from game I can stay up till 6:00 AM because I'm just so just wired up. That’s not good. I’ll wake up and be just so tired the next day when I got to go to practice. I play this music and stretch and do some breathing and relaxing and I get in bed and lay down and just be ready to go to sleep.
A big part of your appeal to NBA fans is your loyalty to the city of Portland, which you’ve very much made your adopted home. The food scene there has really blown up over the last several years and I know you’ve mentioned in interviews recently that one of the benefits of your surgery and rehab process was getting the chance to just spend time at home with the family and enjoy Portland for an extended period of time. Is there a particular restaurant that sticks out as one of your favorites in the city?
I would say Casa Italia. I gotta give them some love. I always get the rigatoni and prosciutto. Their prosciutto man, with the cheese? Oh my God.
