Sixers Add Damian Lillard's Longtime Trainer to Coaching Staff
Perhaps the league's worst-kept secret is how badly Daryl Morey longs to trade for Damian Lillard. The Philadelphia 76ers bringing on Phil Beckner isn't necessarily linked to Morey's pursuit of Lillard, but certainly won't hurt, either.
Yaron Weitzman of Bleacher Report reported on Wednesday that Beckner, Lillard's highly-respected, longtime trainer, was added to Doc Rivers' staff in Philadelphia last month as a coaching consultant.
The team later confirmed that Beckner's official title is Consultant to the Coaching Staff, as well as that he's already begun working with players at Philadelphia's practice facility. Beckner will likely be with the Sixers in Las Vegas for Summer League, too.
Beckner first met Lillard at Weber State, where he was an assistant coach for seven seasons. After helping mold the underrecruited Oakland product into a top-10 pick at Weber State, Beckner became Lillard's individual trainer, since establishing himself as one of the most sought after player-development coaches in league circles.
Beckner is so close with Lillard that he was largely credited for the latter's late-season turnaround in 2020-21, a return to MVP-level play that propelled Portland to 10 wins in last 12 games to narrowly avoid the play-in tournament. Only so many people in the orbit of superstar athletes have the license to give them tough love.
Obviously, Beckner is among the few Lillard trusts with that agency.
"He was sending me (film clips) game after game, and each game was labeled NGE,” Lillard said of Beckner in early May, per Jason Quick of The Athletic. “Not good enough…not good enough…not good enough.”
Weeks before pubicly casting very real doubt on his long-term future in Portland, Lillard, in immediate wake of his team's disappointing playoff loss to the Denver Nuggets, made clear that the Blazers' status quo "isn't good enough" to win a title.
There's nothing to indicate Portland is seeking to meet Lillard's mandate for change, his threats of departure be damned. Limited as the Blazers are in free agency, it's highly doubtful their signings to this point have stoked newfound confidence in Lillard, either.
Could the Sixers be "good enough" to win a championship around Lillard and Joel Embiid? Maybe, and Philadelphia's hiring of Beckner—whose qualifications for the job, it bears stressing, are impressive—will probably at least get Lillard to consider that possibility further.