After the Portland Trail Blazers were eliminated from the NBA playoffs on June 3 by the Denver Nuggets and head coach Terry Stotts was fired the next day, many started to question the future of former Weber State and current Blazers star Damian Lillard in Portland.
Lillard had remained quiet on the subject, at least on social media, until Wednesday night, but a small foray into it ended up putting a BYU football player right in the crosshairs.
Given Lillard’s connection and outright affinity for the state of Utah, many people over the past three weeks have wondered if the Utah Jazz could trade for him, and many images of him have been Photoshopped to have him appear in a Jazz jersey.
One on Wednesday that clearly got Lillard’s attention was shared by BYU defensive lineman Lorenzo Fauatea on Twitter, who wrote, “What we thinking bro? @Dame_Lillard New legacy here in the 801 with @spidadmitchell (Donovan Mitchell)?”
Less than a minute later, Lillard replied with a quote tweet that said simply, “Horrible photoshop.”
Fauatea replied back that he had just found the image on the internet and hadn’t actually created it, and also asked Mitchell to “help me out here.”
Fauatea, of course, became a center of attention on Twitter, and naturally BYU’s rivalry with Utah came into play, as Fauatea’s final tweet of the night came in response to a Utah fan saying, “If we get Dame Lillard on the Jazz I will be a boisterous BYU fan for a year.”
Fauatea responded with a quote tweet of one of Mitchell’s most oft-used phrases, “Let’s go!!”