Damian Lillard detailed his reasons for taking the COVID-19 vaccine.
While the NBA is scrambling to get its players fully vaccinated against COVID-19, the Portland Trail Blazers star shared the importance of getting vaccinated during Media Day on Monday.
“They presented the opportunity and I said, ‘Can I bring my family, too?’” Lillard said. “And they said, ‘yeah,’ and that was it.”
“I’m not mad at people for saying, ‘I need to do my research,’ or they got to take the steps that make them comfortable,” Lillard said. “But I have a lot of people in my family that I’m tight with and I spend a lot of time around and I’m just not going to put their health or their lives in danger because I want to do research. As a kid, I had to get shots my whole life. Before I went to college, I had to get shots. And, I couldn’t tell you one thing about any of them.”
Lillard said the deadly virus has impacted his family.
“I’ve had people in my family actually die and people actually lose their lives to it, and there’s a way for me to protect myself and the people that I love, I’m going to do it,” Lillard said. “It’s pretty simple.”
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Blazers guard CJ McCollum, president of the NBA Players Association, tweeted that 90% of the league is vaccinated.
“There’s a lot of questions, there’s a lot of concerns,” he said. “We’re entering another tough season. Obviously, you’ve got the Delta variant, you have a lot of cases that are spreading in certain areas and we’re trying to do our best to go on with the season. I think with introducing fans, again, people have families, obviously, my wife’s pregnant, so I’m in a position where I need to really know what’s going on at all times and take the proper precautions that are associated with having a productive season. And I think there’s a lot of players, families, coaches, who have immunocompromised people in the household. So, we’re paying close attention to everything and cautiously moving forward and trying to do our best to get through a season.”
