OAKLAND, Calif. – Twenty-five years ago, Milwaukee Bucks guard Damian Lillard was just 9 years old in the Oakland Arena stands rooting on fellow Oakland natives Jason Kidd and Gary Payton Sr. as they played in the 2000 NBA All-Star Game. The City of Oakland has produced basketball legends like Kidd, Payton, 11-time NBA champion Bill Russell and many more.
During the 2025 NBA All-Star Weekend, Oakland and the entire Bay Area will be rooting for their beloved son Lillard as he represents and gives back to his soil during events in Oakland and San Francisco.
“Oakland’s legacy is legendary and you take pride in that, especially for me knowing the history,” Lillard, 34, recently told Andscape. “Everyone would swear up and down that, ‘GP is my cousin, B. Shaw [Brian Shaw] is my cousin and my auntie grew up with Jason Kidd, Antonio Davis…’ All of these dudes, we take pride in it.
“And I’m the same way. Coming from Oakland, it’s a special place not just in sports but in culture, in music and in a lot of ways. There are a lot of legendary people that come from there. You see the pride that they’ve taken throughout history and it has to continue to be that way.”
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On Sunday, Lillard will be making his ninth NBA All-Star appearance. This one could be the most special for the Bucks star as he will be playing in the first All-Star Game in the Bay Area since Oakland hosted it in 2000. The two-time reigning NBA 3-Point Contest champion will also get a chance to three-peat Saturday night at Chase Center. The All-Star Game practice takes place Saturday morning at Oakland Arena — the place Lillard spent time as a child watching Golden State Warriors games and a short drive from his Brookfield neighborhood home.
Warriors star Stephen Curry is viewed as the host of NBA All-Star Weekend. But even the four-time NBA champion knows he must make room for the local star in Lillard.
“I know he has showed up in the community so consistently ever since he left for college at Weber State and now this many years into the league,” Curry told Andscape. “He still has that passion to represent the city. And I hope that Oakland has as much of a presence with All-Star Weekend as San Francisco because of the culture, the basketball history, the impact on our franchise over the years. And I hope that that comes through because it’s only right that the story of Oakland is told the right way. Dame is going to be a big part of that.”
There is a long list of other NBA players from Oakland and the Bay Area who received national notoriety in high school. Such wasn’t the case for Lillard who attended three different high schools before being ranked as the 48th best point guard in the country out of Oakland High School in 2008. The unheralded recruit signed with mid-major Weber State, which resides in a Big Sky Conference not known for producing NBA players.
Four years later, however, Lillard was a third-team All-American at Weber State. The Portland Trail Blazers selected him with the sixth overall pick in the 2012 NBA draft. Thirteen years later, Lillard is the Blazers’ all-time leading scorer was named to the NBA 75th Anniversary Team and seems to be destined to join Russell, Kidd and Payton in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
“Hate it or love it the underdogs on top,” rapper Mistah Fab, an Oakland native, said. “Great to be an All-Star in front of his home crowd, inspiration and light to those still in the dark.”
Said Raphael Saadiq, a famed singer and producer from Oakland, to the NBA: “I’m super-proud of one of us doing good. Also, it’s a reflection of ‘The Bay’ everywhere and kids all over the world. We need those people that aren’t afraid of being role models. And Dame doesn’t shy away from being a role model.”
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Lillard has also been a notable philanthropist, primarily in Oakland and Portland, since arriving to the NBA. After being named the 2013 NBA Rookie of the Year, he hosted a community picnic with food, games and music acts for several years at Brookfield Park in Oakland. Lillard also has an AAU team called Team Lillard and hosts a Formula Zero Camp in the offseason for many of the nation’s underrated college players. He was given the 2024 Bill Walton Community Impact Award for his community work through The Lillard Foundation helping Oregon youth succeed in academics and athletics.
Lillard announced The Damian Lillard Scholars program during a school assembly at Oakland High on Thursday to aid the academic success of students graduating from East Bay California high schools. The Damian Lillard Scholars program will award nine East Bay Area high schools a $25,000 annual scholarship to Portland State University. The scholarship winners will also receive additional financial support for food, housing, clothing, textbooks, transportation and unanticipated financial needs. For the 2025-26 academic year, 27 Damian Lillard Scholar-eligible students have applied to Portland State with 15 being admitted.
“We could not be more proud to offer this scholarship to East Bay students while linking arms with one of Portland’s most exciting and inspiring civic leaders,” Portland State president Ann Cudd said in a statement. “Damian Lillard has heaped so much love on the city of Portland that PSU counts him as one of our own. We are thrilled to partner with him to find pathways to a PSU education for students from his hometown.”
Said Lillard to Andscape: “I feel great about it. I don’t like to do things for show like, ‘Look what I’m doing,’ or I’m trying to fake up. I’m trying to figure out ways to have an impact and really lift people up. And that scholarship is one of them being able to partner with Portland State to help the kids and give them a chance to have a better future.
“It’s something that can impact their lives. It gets them out of Oakland and allows them to experience a different place with some support through their education. And I have been thinking of other ways to put my feet on the ground and really put something together that is just something light to really try to help someone out.”
Lillard lived a short drive from Oakland Arena as a child. He said his father, Houston, had a season-ticket package for Warriors games. Damian Lillard said he used to sneak around the Oakland Arena as a child during Warriors games, often going to the media room to get sodas at halftime.
Lillard said that his father took him and his older brother, Houston Jr., to the NBA All-Star Game and the Saturday night dunk and 3-point contest. While seeing Shaquille O’Neal and Tim Duncan share All-Star Game co-MVP honors was exciting, Lillard most vividly recalls the historic dunk contest performance by winner Vince Carter. The Oakland Arena will host the NBA Celebrity Game on Friday and the NBA All-Star practice and the HBCU Classic between Morehouse College and Tuskegee University on Saturday.
“Saturday stood out to me with Vince Carter going crazy in the dunk contest,” Lillard said. “I felt like we were about 15 rows up. It was a great experience seeing the dunk contest and the Jam Session (fanfare) with my brother. My dad kept us out of school the whole week. It was just cool. A good experience…
“When the Warriors were bad, we had season tickets for a couple seasons. I’ve been all up and down that arena. The fact that they don’t play there no more, the fact that they’re going to take the practices there makes it more special. It will bring back a lot of memories.”
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The Oakland that Lillard grew up in included three major professional sports teams in the Warriors, Oakland Raiders and Oakland Athletics. All three have departed as the Warriors moved San Francisco in 2019, the Raiders moved to Las Vegas in 2020 and the Athletics will play in Sacramento starting this upcoming season. The minor league Oakland Roots Soccer Club will be playing at the Oakland Coliseum during the 2025 season.
The African American Sports and Entertainment Group purchased the Oakland Coliseum from the Athletics and the City of Oakland in 2024. The plan is for the arena to stay as part of a $5 billion sports, entertainment, educational, housing and business district. Oakland is currently being led by an interim mayor and in the midst of a financial and safety crisis, but was also ranked in 2024 by Conde Nast as being America’s top restaurant city. Oakland’s own Saadiq, Too $hort, E-40 and En Vogue will be performing during the NBA All-Star Game.
“It’s weird for the city to be struggling the way it is, for everything to be going on,” Lillard said. “I feel like my childhood, a lot of the positivity was that all of the guys who are from the Bay Area we took pride in having our teams there. It gave us something to belong to us. But now with all of them leaving, it’s like a ghost town. So, I hate to see that for the city.”
Lillard wore No. 1 at Oakland High and at Weber State. But after his arrival to the NBA with Portland, he has worn No. 0 as the letter “O” to represent Ogden where Weber State is, the state of Oregon and most notably his hometown of Oakland. It’s not uncommon to see basketball players from Oakland now following in Lillard’s suit to represent by wearing No. 0 now. During the 2025 NBA All-Star Game watched worldwide on Sunday, he will be representing Oakland wearing 0 on his jersey.
“I wore No. 1 my whole life,” Lillard said. “I was trying to figure out a number that I can tell a story with once I got drafted. In college, I almost switched my number from 1 to 0. I was going to do it for Oakland. I was like, ‘I’m from Oakland and I’m going to change my number to 0.’ But I never did it, because I was like, ‘I’ve always been No. 1.’
“And then somebody on Twitter said, and I don’t even know who the person was, said, ‘You should wear 0 for Oakland, Ogden and being in Oregon now.’ And I don’t know who the person was. But I remember looking at it and thinking that is something I care about and something that will stick. And that’s a real story.”
