PORTLAND, Ore — As Trail Blazers point guard Damian Lillard's stellar rookie season has progressed, it has been hard for Nets fans to stomach the fact Portland drafted him with the pick the Nets sent to the Blazers as part of the Gerald Wallace trade last season.
But Nets interim coach P.J. Carlesimo has no such reservations about the move, regardless of how good he believes Lillard to be.
"We did whatever we did for, I think, good reasons, and reasons that made sense then and make sense now, however he turns out," Carlesimo said after his team practiced at Arizona State yesterday, and ahead of its matchup with Lillard and the Trail Blazers tonight.
AP
IMPACT PLAYER: Trail Blazers rookie point guard Damian Lillard, driving past the Thunder's Russell Westbrook during a recent game, will be a tough assignment for the Nets tonight.
"He's a hell of a player. He's a good player."
Portland took Lillard sixth overall after the Nets — who had given Portland a top-three protected pick, along with Mehmet Okur and Shawne Williams in exchange for Wallace at the trade deadline last March — failed to have one of their ping-pong balls selected in the NBA's Draft Lottery last spring.
Regardless of whether the Nets would have taken a point guard with that pick, considering they were hoping to re-sign Deron Williams as a free agent, Lillard has been terrific since the season began.
He is a practical lock to win the league's Rookie of the Year award since putting up 23 points and 11 assists in his first-ever game. He further cemented his status atop the list when No. 1 overall pick Anthony Davis missed some time with injuries.
Lillard, averaging 19.1 points and 6.5 assists while shooting just under 37 percent from 3-point range this season for Portland, spent the past four years playing in relative obscurity at Weber State, a lower-level Division I school. But he still managed to come across Deron Williams' radar when he was playing for the Jazz, as Weber State's campus in Ogden, Utah, is just about 45 minutes north of Salt Lake City.
"He's a good player," Williams said. "I heard a lot about him when I was in Utah and he was coming up.
"He's really poised. That's the main thing I see with him, how poised he is. He plays like a vet already. He doesn't get rattled. He plays at his own pace. ... I like him a lot."
As for the player on the other side of the deal, Wallace said he didn't spend enough time in Portland — he played there for a little more than a year, and 65 games total — to feel too nostalgic about making his first trip back there since the trade was made.
"I wasn't there long enough," he said. "It's not a big thing for me."
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Wallace sat out of yesterday's practice with sore feet, but said he would be fine to play against the Trail Blazers.
Joe Johnson, however, was much less certain about his availability after sitting out of practice with continued soreness from the right quadriceps contusion he suffered in Saturday's loss to the Clippers that forced him to miss Sunday's win in Phoenix.
"I don't know, to be honest with you," Johnson said when asked about his status for tonight's game. "I'm going to really take it one day at a time, and see how I feel. I feel a lot better today than I did yesterday, so we'll see."
tbontemps@nypost.com
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