Portland’s Lillard to become 1st player to do 5 All-Star events

Portland Trail Blazers point guard Damian Lillard will become the first player to compete in five events during All-Star weekend in New Orleans.

Lillard, the reigning Rookie of the Year, will do the slam dunk contest, the Rising Stars Challenge, the Skills Challenge, the three-point contest and he made the Western Conference All-Star team as a reserve.

“A lot of people don’t get the opportunity,” Lillard told USA TODAY. “So I just felt like it was something that had never been done, and I’m capable of doing all the things that need to be done in all the competitions, so I figured why not go out and be the first one to do everything and get that experience.”

Lillard, who is averaging 20.6 points and 5.7 assists and 3.2 rebounds this season, says he’s not worried about spreading himself too thin.

“The skills competition takes two minutes on the court, the dunk contest maybe will be three or four minutes on the court, and three-point shooting is about two minutes,” Lillard told the newspaper. “And it’s not like the rookie-sophomore game is a real regular season game, so I mean I’m looking at maybe an hour total of actual activity with all five things. People think there’s more energy being exerted than there actually is. It’s really not that much when you think about the time that you actually spend doing it.”

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