Dame Lillard and Marvin Bagley III Battle For Rap Supremacy

Though the NBA season has come to a close and the draft has been settled the offseason drama has just started. While on First Take Thursday with Stephen A. Smith and Max Kellerman, Marvin Bagley–the Sacramento Kings Center and number 2 pick in the 2018 NBA Draft–simply responded to questions of his rap ability. Kellerman asked if he was better than Damian Lillard (to which any sensible rapper would respond yes–why would you admit to being lesser?) and if he would battle Lillard on the set of First Take. The exchange went like this:

Max Kellerman: Roy Jones, who was a colleague of mine at HBO Boxing, played me a clip of you freestyling in the hallway. And it has been my opinion since then that the best MC in the NBA is either you or Damian Lillard. But who is the best MC in the NBA?

Marvin Bagley III: Man, me. Me. Man, I love music. I love music. So, I’m gonna go with myself.

MK: Would you ever battle Damian Lillard?

MBIII: Yeah. For sure.

Harmless enough, right? Dame immediately took to Twitter to announce that he wanted all the smoke. Bagley fired the first shots with a track “No Debate,” a laudable effort over excellent production but with only light shots at the Second Team All-NBA guard. Bagley is a fine lyricist but much like his effort on the defensive end he could still use a bit of work.

But as we saw this postseason, Dame is no stranger to quieting the doubters, within hours Dame Dolla dropped a freestyle entitled “MARVINNNNNN???” over Drake’s Pusha T diss track “Duppy Freestyle,” filled with both insight and insults, Dame drained bucket after bucket on the young King in embarrassing fashion. 

Virtually everyone on Twitter, even the notoriously grumpy Joe Budden, decided Dame won the battle. However that wasn’t enough for the Portland Trailblazers star, just hours after that freestyle Dolla came through once again with a 40 foot bomb to end it all called “Bye Bye” using his own iconic series winner as the single art.

To add insult(s) to injury, this time he did it over Drake’s “Back to Back” instrumental hitting Bagley with a double dose of Frizzy. Lillard’s second round of roasting was cruel and unnecessary like dunking in the last seconds of an already decided game. Now Bagley’s only choice is to dunk on Lillard during the regular season or start rap beef with Max Kellerman for putting him in this position.