The path to the Trail Blazers breaking a seven-game losing streak and getting their first victory in the month of December Friday night versus the Hornets started last summer in Cabo San Lucas.
It was in that resort town on the southern tip of Mexico’s Baja Peninsula that Damian Lillard and Ben McLemore crossed paths while both were enjoying offseason vacations. And since Lillard had spent much of the summer of 2021 thinking about ways in which the Trail Blazers could improve while McLemore was a free agent whose most prized skill, three-point shooting, was in relatively short supply on Portland’s roster, the former figured he might as well let the latter know there was interest.