Draymond GreenForward, Golden State Warriors

Dame on the trait great mid-major players have 🤯 | #shorts

28 Feb 2022 · 1 min

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In this short monologue, the speaker (Damian Lillard) explains that players from mid-major (small‑school) programs develop a unique leadership trait because they must win with less talent. They learn early to maximize teammates, inspire collective effort, and create winning habits beyond just scoring or assisting. Lillard cites examples such as CJ McCollum, Kawhi Leonard, and Stephen Curry—players who came from smaller schools and carried that responsibility into the NBA, where they can now leverage both personal ability and learned leadership to succeed with more talented rosters.

Chapters

As a mid-major player, bro, you're playing with less talent than what everybody else played with. You're learning early how to get the most out of that and how to make a team win without everybody just being nice, having the same ability that you have. So you gotta learn how to lead. And that ain't always scoring all the points or getting a bunch of assists. You gotta learn how to make people go. You gotta learn how to make people, like, come along with you, like, and do everything they can to have a part in winning. And I think you saw that, like, CJ did that. Kawhi did that. Steph did that. All of us that come from small schools, it's like we have that responsibility, like less talented players. So when you come to the NBA and you playing with more talent and you got the ability yourself, like, you know how to make it happen. Yeah.