Damian Lillard remembers exactly where he was when, at age 16, he made a bold declaration about his future.

He was leaving Oracle Arena after watching a high school playoff game with his dad and brother. The three were walking past the Oakland Coliseum next door, heading toward the Coliseum BART station, Lillard an unheralded high school point guard at the time.

“I told them, ‘The next time I play here, I’m going to be in the NBA,'” Lillard, now 28, said Monday. “I remember exactly where we were … I think that’s pretty cool.”

Lillard, a native of Brookfield Village in East Oakland, less than a five-minute drive from Oracle, has played 16 regular season and playoff games there since that promise more than a decade ago. He’s averaging 24.8 points per game against the Warriors in his hometown and 25.8 points over five playoff games at Oracle. The next two, maybe three, possibly four games he plays there, however, will be the most important he’s played in any venue during his career to date.

He leads his underdog Portland Trail Blazers into their first conference finals since 2000, fittingly in the last season before the Warriors leave his native Town for San Francisco next season.

Lillard still carries with him fond memories inside Oracle, from a chance encounter with the Warriors’ old mascot when he was in fourth grade to witnessing Baron Davis’ iconic posterization of Utah’s Andrei Kirilenko in the 2007 playoffs. But no such memory would top closing that very building by shocking the two-time defending champions, the daunting task that lies ahead for Lillard and the Trail Blazers starting Tuesday.

“Wouldn’t it be great for an Oakland kid to shut down Oracle?” said Orlando Watkins, Lillard’s head coach at Oakland High. “Can you imagine a guy who grew up a stone’s throw away from Oracle putting the Warriors out of the playoffs and shutting down Oracle?”

Mentioning Lillard and a championship in the same breath has been far-fetched throughout his seven-year NBA career until this week. In 2013 the Blazers missed the playoffs, from 2014-16 they bowed out before the conference finals and in each of the last two years they were swept in the first round.

This year Lillard has guided the Blazers through the first round against the Thunder with a series-clinching buzzer-beater from the parking lot, then through the second round against the Nuggets with McCollum’s help in Game 7. Lillard is averaging 28.4 points these playoffs, behind only Durant and Toronto’s Kawhi Leonard among players yet to be eliminated, along with six assists and 4.8 rebounds per game while playing over 40 minutes per contest.

Lillard’s next roadblock on his playoff rampage is the team that’s won three of the last four NBA titles, the same team he grew up cheering for.

Between Lillard’s birth in July 1990 and his 2012 entrance into the league, the Warriors reached the playoffs four times and won just two playoff series, one of which came before he turned 1 year old. His father owned season tickets from 1999-2002 about 10 rows up across from the visitors’ bench. During those three seasons, the Warriors went 57-189. Before he wrote his own underdog story, Lillard witnessed one up close every year.

Lillard’s favorite memory watching the Warriors came in 2007, when eighth-seeded Golden State knocked off the top-seeded Mavericks and Dirk Nowitzki in the first round. The “We Believe” Warriors had missed the playoffs in 12 consecutive seasons and the Mavericks entered as defending Western Conference champions. The Warriors advanced in six games, marking the first time a No. 8 seed defeated a No. 1 seed in a seven-game series.

Although the Jazz ousted the Warriors in five games the next round, Lillard watched Baron Davis’ legendary dunk over Kirilenko from the stands in the Warriors’ only win that series. He still marvels at that moment 12 years later, as he now creates lasting playoff snapshots of his own on this memorable Blazers run.

“That was crazy. I couldn’t believe it,” Lillard said of Davis’ dunk. “I couldn’t believe the Warriors were actually doing that. Some tough years before that.”

One childhood memory from Oracle that sticks out above the rest for Lillard? Meeting Thunder, the Warriors’ old mascot, when he was in fourth grade. Lillard and his cousin stayed after a game, and after the lights went out, they walked through one of the tunnels and saw a small backpack lying on the ground. Lillard’s cousin opened the bag to find Thunder’s suit and a pair of Nikes he wore during games.

“At the time they weren’t a championship team, so the security was probably a little bit worse than it is now,” Lillard quipped. ” … This bald-headed dude come walkin’ out and he like, ‘Hey, what y’all doing in my bag?’ And it was the mascot. I thought that was a pretty funny experience.”

Two decades later the Warriors are very much a championship team, and when Lillard exits the tunnel he and his team will again be met with boos by the same people he grew up among.

After Lillard’s 37-foot buzzer-beater over Paul George eliminated Oklahoma City in the first round, Draymond Green said, “He plays like a guy from Oakland, with a chip on his shoulder, a guy who’s been doubted forever.”

To Lillard, “playing like a guy from Oakland” means “toughness, fearless, just go out there and compete and play the game. Don’t back down from nobody. When (Green) says that, I think he says it with other Oakland players in mind.”

Lillard is well aware of Oakland’s rich basketball lineage. He rattles off names like Bill Russell, Gary Payton, Brian Shaw, streetballer Demetrius “Hook” Mitchell, Antonio Davis and Jason Kidd, who said before he was inducted into the Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame this month that Lillard, not Hall of Famers like himself or Payton, is the best point guard from Oakland.

He’s gone from an Oakland High no-name to small-school Weber State to a player on the biggest stage of his life in the same town his high school jersey is retired.

“He obviously represents Oakland everywhere, any opportunity that he gets,” Stephen Curry said of Lillard, whose money helped refurbish Oakland High’s gym, weight room and music program in 2016. “Understand obviously this is the last year at Oracle, too, so it’ll be special for him and his family, him growing up right down the street from Oracle, but unfortunately I don’t want it to be a happy ending for him.”

Lillard will have 15 of his closest family members in attendance at Oracle this week, far fewer than in the regular season. The playoffs, he said, aren’t a party.

He insists memories of his Oakland roots and childhood visits to Oracle subside once the ball tips when he plays in Oakland, and this time will be no different despite the arena’s farewell tour and the heightened stakes in his first-ever conference finals.

“I know it was a dream for him to make it to the NBA. Once he achieved that dream, I’m sure he wanted to come home to play,” said Watkins, Lillard’s high school coach. “He normally has good games coming back to Oracle, but to be here now in the conference finals is probably beyond his wildest dreams.”

Lillard has already authored his own memories in Oracle before it bids farewell to the NBA, most recently sinking a game-winning 3-pointer over Curry with 5.1 seconds remaining in his last regular season game there.

But as the Warriors aim to close their storied arena with a third consecutive championship, Lillard wants to top the memories he’s already made at Oracle with one more: David conquering Goliath and the hometown kid taking down his hometown team.

“It’s a storybook moment, this being the last year playing in Oakland, me growing up here,” Lillard said. ” … It’s a special ending. Hopefully it’ll end the right way. For us.”

Warriors beat writer Mark Medina contributed reporting to this story.