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Damian Lillard is coming home.
The Trail Blazers icon, who was released by the Milwaukee Bucks on July 1 shortly after tearing his Achilles tendon in a playoff game, will return to the team he led for 11 seasons on a reported three-year, $42 million contract.
The news of his signing—like the news of his release from the Bucks—sent shock waves across both the NBA and Oregon. The state’s senior U.S. senator, Ron Wyden, posted on X within minutes of the news breaking: “It’s about Dame Time. Welcome home to a true @trailblazers icon.”
The news represents a stunning turn of events for Lillard and the organization, who at this time two years ago were locked in a contentious high-stakes game of chicken, with Blazers GM Joe Cronin attempting to have his cake and eat it too by holding out for the best possible trade package while also trying not to permanently alienate Lillard and his supporters throughout the city and state.
That sound you hear in the distance is Cronin eating a whole lotta cake.
Fresh off his own contract extension, an emboldened Cronin has made huge waves over the past month, trading Anfernee Simons for veteran defensive stalwart Jrue Holiday and then delighting hundreds of millions of basketball fans throughout China by using the team’s first-round pick to acquire little-known center Yang Hansen. (The selection was initially panned by the media but is now being applauded as a potential steal based on Yang’s play at the Las Vegas Summer League, where he has been the talk of the town due to his passing ability and all-around game.)
Lillard will return to a drastically different basketball landscape in Portland than the one he left.
The Blazers, because of the return from the Lillard trade and the subsequent tear-down of the roster, are stocked with young talent like Yang, Shaedon Sharpe, Toumani Camara, Deni Avdija, Donovan Clingan and Lillard’s own replacement at point guard, Scoot Henderson—who Lillard, Holiday and Chauncey Billups will now collectively mentor in the most pivotal year of his career. The team also has a treasure trove of future draft picks and contracts they can use as salary filler to consolidate assets and acquire a star down the road.
Other than at the team’s media day, however, you are unlikely to see Lillard in a Blazer jersey this coming season. He will likely spend the entire season rehabbing—and will make somewhere in the neighborhood of $36 million between his new deal and the $22 million-plus the Bucks will pay him not to play for them.
Lillard spent the past two seasons sitting in the snow by himself in Milwaukee, and his decision to return to Portland was reportedly made in large part because it’s where his three young children are. ESPN reported this factor as having been of “the ultimate importance” to Lillard.
So the king has returned. Rip City has been made whole again, and Lillard will now take his place as elder statesman, helping the team’s young core get to a level that he was never quite able to take the team to on his own. But if there’s anything we’ve learned about Damian Lillard in the 13 years since he appeared out of the mist, it’s that he should never, under any circumstance, be counted out.
His deal is proof the team believes he still has something left in the tank. If things work out—a sentence Blazer fans have a complicated relationship with—then Lillard could be the piece that puts the team over the top, delivering the title that has for so long eluded him.
