Thompson: Damion Lee turned heartbreak into inspiration on his way to earning a Warriors roster spot

May 26, 2024

The soundtrack of Damion Lee’s life follows a journey of pain and searching, inspiration and triumph. Growing up on Long Island and then Baltimore, music was his escape.

“He loves music,” Lee’s mother, Michelle Riddick, said. “He took drums in school. As a kid he listened to Earth, Wind & Fire. I used to try to get him to play music. He did like to listen to music all the time. He’s an old soul.”

Lee has an old iPad full of poems and raps, from all those times he hunted for the phrases and concepts to make sense of it all. He’s got MP3 files of beats and melodies he crafted, bass lines and bridges aimed at managing his persistent thoughts and emotions. And when he wasn’t making his own music, he got lost in the music of others. Letting their lyrics talk to him, their refrains soothe his mind.

School occupied his time. Basketball consumed his energy. But music anchored his spirit.

Even now, Lee, 27, can pinpoint the meaningful songs at the various critical masses of his life. Such as the lowest point.

“‘Roses’ by Kanye,” he said, without hesitation.

The 2005 song — which samples Bill Withers’ “Rosie” from 1977 — is an emotive, pseudo a cappella rap ballad about Kanye visiting his grandmother in the hospital. It became especially poignant for Lee late in 2010. That’s when his grandmother, Ruth Riddick, was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer. It was her second bout and, this time, they gave her three months to live.

Lee was alone at prep school way out in Oakdale, Conn., more than 300 miles from his grandmother. Born in New York, Lee and his mother moved to Maryland when he was 11. His maternal grandfather died and his mother made what she called a grief purchase when she randomly had a two-story colonial built in Maryland. Her widowed mother moved with them. While his mother was building a thriving career as a registered nurse and wearing the hat of both parents, Lee got close with his Nanny. They hung out. She went to all his games and they’d go to the movies together. She was easy to talk to, his best buddy.

So when they put a clock on her life and he was tucked in the backwoods of Connecticut, “Roses” was on repeat. When Kanye raps about how in his family, “we know where home is, and so instead of sending flowers, we the roses,” Lee consoled himself with thoughts of being that metaphoric rose for his Nanny. During the song’s hook, Lee would let the chills take over him as he sang along.

I … smile … when roses come to see me
And I … can’t wait for a sunny day
Can’t wait for the clouds to break

On Jan. 17, 2011, St. Thomas More was playing Quality Education Academy. The game was at Baruch College in New York, so Lee had a bustling contingent of support in the crowd. He noticed his mom wasn’t there when it started but saw her come in late. He played well that game.

“After the game, I saw my mom go to my coach,” Lee said. “I was so happy that we won the game. ‘She was like, ‘All right, Day, I gotta tell you something.’ … I’m like, ‘What? We just won.’ The bus is about to leave soon. She was like, ‘Nanny passed away.’ I broke down in front of everybody. Fell out crying. And then of course she started crying. That was her mom, you know. So I stayed home for two weeks then eventually, you know, had to go back to school.”

The presumption is Lee got here, into an NBA roster spot with a guaranteed contract on the Warriors, through some version of benevolence. That he was somehow gifted by association (he’s married to Stephen Curry’s younger sister, Sydel) onto a championship franchise. But Damion’s story, his journey, suggests otherwise.

His body is a coded account of his life with timestamps of the hurt he has endured, the occasions when life tried to deter him from this level. He earned the $1.5 million of guaranteed money — and a chance to earn another $3 million over the next three years if he stays on the roster — through pain, through struggle, through overcoming. To get here, he went to two high schools and two colleges. After going undrafted in 2016, he received two training camp invites. He got two 10-day contracts from the Hawks followed by two two-way contracts with the Warriors in two years. He tore two ACLs, one in each knee, and had two broken bones, one in each hand.

So on nights like Monday, when he set a career-high with 26 points in a loss to visiting to Miami — making 8 of 12 shots, including a career-high tying five 3-pointers — it’s more evidence of what he knows to be true. He earned this.

Lee was at a family friend’s house in Louisville, fresh off having surgery to repair his torn left ACL. His mother was helping him get ready for bed. She got him set up and was getting ready to leave, but he didn’t want her to go.

“He said, ‘Mom. I just need you for a second,'” Riddick recalled. “So I just sat with him for a while, just sat there and hugged him. Sometimes, you gotta be quiet and hug your child.”

That’s when she knew this one cut even deeper than the scalpel that sliced his knee open. On Dec. 23, 2016, playing for the Maine Red Claws, after getting invited to camp by the Boston Celtics, Lee tore his left ACL. He was so close to being eligible for a 10-day contract, which traditionally start in January. But instead of getting called up, he was shut down.

Lee had already torn his right ACL three years earlier. He was playing for Drexel against then No. 1 Arizona at Madison Square Garden during the preseason NIT, when he drove to the basket and felt a pop in his knee. It was the fifth game of the 2013-14 season. He didn’t return to action until the following November. He came back better than ever. He led Drexel in scoring average (21.4) the next season and shot 38.6 percent from 3 to go with 6.1 rebounds per game. Looking for a greater challenge and exposure, he transferred to Louisville for his redshirt senior season and led the Cardinal in scoring with 15.9 points per game. Freshman Donovan Mitchell averaged 7.4 points off the bench.

On Feb. 1, Lee needed just 12 shots to drop 24 points as Louisville upset the top-ranked Tar Heels. Four days later, Louisville announced a self-imposed postseason ban, ending Lee’s one chance for the big stage of the NCAA Tournament. A couple of weeks later, against Duke on Feb. 20, 2016, he dislocated his fingers during pregame warmups.

“It was gruesome,” Mitchell, now a Utah Jazz star, said after his team won at Chase Center last month. “Yeah, it was scary. He dislocated two of them and he came right back in and hooped. He (almost) had like 30 on Duke. I think that speaks to the competitor and who he is as a player. Yeah, he’s a motherfucker for real. He’s a guy that wants to go out there and hoop and be the best for his team and I respect that about him for sure.”

Riddick threw a draft-night gathering for her son that June. Knowing he wouldn’t be drafted, they wanted to celebrate him getting this far. When he finished Calvert Hall, a Catholic college prep high school in Maryland, he was so underrated he committed to play for nearby Towson University before taking the prep-school route. To make it from Towson to starring at Louisville was already quite the accomplishment. But Lee was determined to prove he belonged in the NBA.

Six months after that party is when he tore his left ACL.

“He was just defeated,” Riddick said. “I’ve never seen my son that vulnerable. It didn’t last long. But it was a moment that I was like, ‘Oh, wow.’ This was really tough. The first time, I was more in the mode like when my mom had cancer the first time. We’re going to fight. Let’s do what we have to do. But the second time was worst than the first. We’d been through this. The rehab part, we all knew what to do. But it breaks you as a parent to be like, ‘Here we are again’ and we don’t know why it’s happening. I said, ‘You know what? God is trying to teach you something. I don’t know what it is but you better learn it quickly.'”

About a month ago, Jan. 14, Lee stopped in the office of Ralph Walker, the Warriors’ head of security. He had a moment waiting for him.

In a clear glass office behind the Warriors’ locker room, Lee signed a three-year, $4.5 million contract. It guaranteed him $842,327, his pro-rated salary for the remainder of this season. He’s guaranteed another $600,000 next season, and he’ll make $1,762,796 if he is still on the roster past the guarantee date next January. If he is on the team in 2021-22, he will make $1,910,860. Not eye-popping numbers per NBA standards. But validation nonetheless.

That’s why after he signed, he called his mom and his wife. And when he got to the car, he turned to his favorite, Jay-Z, to punctuate the moment. He put on “A Dream” from “The Blueprint 2” album, featuring a famous verse from Notorious B.I.G. The song is about a conversation Jay-Z has with the late rapper in a dream and the inspiration he received in the chat.

Then B.I. said, “Hov’ remind yourself
Nobody built like you, you designed yourself”

Lee turned it up even louder when Faith Evans came in singing, “Was it all a dream? Was it all a dream?” It would make sense if part of this does seem surreal to Lee.

He was just playing with his cousins in their house on Long Island, back before the move to Maryland. His mom and her sister, who was divorced, were both registered nurses, so they decided to live together with their children. The six of them shared a four-bedroom house in Huntington on Long Island in New York. Lee and his three cousins were more like siblings. His mom and aunt rotated as head of the household while the other worked her 12-hour shift. Lee spent weekends with his grandparents. Though his dad left his life when he was 8, Lee was swaddled in what the Greeks called storge — a familial love.

When his grandfather died and his mother moved them to Maryland, he made her agree to one condition: no more 12-hour shifts.

“It was the best thing that could’ve happened to Damion,” his mother said. “My sister and I always talk about this. Being in Long Island is great. I’m a native New Yorker. I just think being here offered him a different group of friends, a different avenue. I don’t think he would have had the same opportunities.”

Lee’s mom introduced him to basketball in his youth. She didn’t play, but he said she was the first one to expose him to the game. It was in Baltimore where Lee’s game took off. The competition of the area nurtured him, molding his game. On Long Island, they weren’t far from New York City. But from a basketball perspective, Long Island is far from the basketball Mecca. In Maryland, he was in a basketball hotbed.

Josh Selby, who starred at Kansas before becoming a second-round pick, was in Lee’s class. So was C.J. Fair, an eventual standout at Syracuse, and Roscoe Smith, who won a national title with Connecticut. Lee’s best friend was Eric Atkins, who went on to play at Notre Dame.

“And that’s just around our Baltimore area,” Lee said. “The whole I-95 from Baltimore down to D.C. was just a lot of talent.”

Lee is a natural scorer and has been at every level. He is not an explosive player, but he learned how to play to his strengths. His combination of shooting ability and constant movement makes him a tough cover. He knows how to navigate screens, create contact, how to use the athleticism of others against them.

Still, there were plenty of questions about his game. While he has good height for his position, build and athleticism have always been concerns. He’s not exceptionally athletic, much closer to average for his position, and he wasn’t physically imposing. Over the years, he worked on his body, improving his upper-body strength.

Perhaps the biggest knock against Lee has been his age. He spent five years in college, only one of those seasons in a major basketball conference. He signed his first guaranteed contract at 27. He’ll be 28 when next season starts. So he has also been fighting against the perception of low upside.

But there has always been enough skill there to make him intriguing. And shooters will always get a look. The Warriors had Lee on their draft board but didn’t have a second-round pick during the 2016 NBA Draft. They selected Damian Jones with their first-round pick, No. 30 overall, and kept Lee on their radar. The Santa Cruz Warriors acquired Lee via trade in August 2017, getting him in their system.

“He’s improved a ton,” assistant general manager Kirk Lacob said. “Worked his ass off.”

On the inside of Lee’s left knee is a tattoo of XII-XXIII or 12-23. It stands for 12-23, the date he tore his left ACL. On his right knee is a similar tat: XI-XXVII, Nov. 27, the date of his second ACL tear. He’s also got a similar tat on his right hand, II-XXI for Feb. 21, the date he broke a bone in his shooting hand in 2015. He needs to add another one, XI-XI, for the second time he broke his bone this past November, knocking him out a month. It was the same bone in the same right hand as the first one.

“A lot of it has to do with his faith,” his mom said. “And probably having been through traumatic experiences as well. Losing someone so close to you so young, knowing you can still survive and still love. And you can still laugh. And you can still live. At the end of the day, death is final but everything else you’re going to heal from.”

He’s got tattoo of the sun on his back — “because the sun always shines through the clouds” — with his mother’s birthday in it: IV-XVI, because “my mom is my sun.” He has a Roman numeral for the date he was born, X-XXI, and the date he was married, and the dates he committed to Drexel and to Louisville, and the date he scored his first NBA basket.

Yes, he’s also got a guardian angel tattoo representing his grandmother, and with it is I-XVII, the date she died.

They are now proud moments, reminders of how he couldn’t be broken. He’s got a tattoo for every time he had to endure to remind himself how no matter how many times life went low, he still wound up flying high. He’s also got a song for that, too: “Can’t Give Up Now” by the gospel duo Mary Mary. He played it when he wanted to give up. He played it when he felt like fate was working against him. He played it when he needed to keep going.

I just can’t give up now
I’ve come too far from where I started from
Nobody told me the road would be easy
And I don’t believe He brought me this far to leave me

“I’m not the first person to go through something tragic,” Lee said. “So as long as I could turn my tragedy into triumph or my heartbreak into success, and try to be strong for everyone around me, then it’s like I don’t need you to feel sorry for me. I don’t feel bad for me. I don’t feel sad. Trust me, I know there is a greater purpose for everything that I’ve gone through.”

(Photo: Nick Wass / AP)

ncG1vNJzZmismJqutbTLnquim16YvK57kG5qcWtgZXxzfJFpZmlqX2aBcMDHqKSpq5%2BjeqWtzKKmp2WcmrJuwNSrpZ6cXZ2yor7Tm6memZtitq%2FAzmagp6ugnr%2BiwMiopWannmK1qr%2BMsJiyZaSkeqat0aegp59dlnq4rdGroKiqo2K%2FsL%2FTnqlmq6CkwXA%3D