Two Brothers Say Damian Lillard's Bodyguards Beat Them Up For Taking a Photo of the Portland Star

Two brothers in Portland claim they were savagely beaten to a pulp by bodyguards of Portland star Damian Lillard for simply taking his picture. Lillard and the Blazers have not yet commented, and police say Lillard – the NBA Rookie of the Year – is not a suspect, but here’s the story the brothers tell KGW in Oregon: Lillard and his posse were exiting a bar around 2:30 am when one of the brothers snapped a photo of Lillard with a cell phone. What was Lillard doing?

Walking to his car. Things quickly got ugly:

"I saw that he was clearly upset, they were upset and I was like, ‘Can I apologize to him? Like I’ll go up right now and apologize to him,’” the brother said. When the second brother stepped in to help his brother, he says he was punched and kicked repeatedly, enough to break his nose and require stitches in his lip. “Damian Lillard basically instigated it because he actually looked like he was going to go up to my brother and start fighting him. And since he did that, the rest of the guys started getting riled up too and like they thought it was okay to just start fighting out of nowhere,” said the second brother."

This will probably give some Portland fans terrible flashblacks to the Jail Blazers of a decade ago, but it is important to remember that we’ve only heard one side of the story.

Lillard, taken 6th in last year’s NBA draft, averaged 19 points per game and 6.5 assists per game. [via KGW]