Former Blazer Damian Lillard to return to Portland

It’s Dame Time again in Portland.

As first reported by ESPN, nine-time NBA All-Star Damian Lillard is finalizing a three-year contract to return to the Portland Trail Blazers.

Lillard confirmed the deal on X.

The Blazers traded Lillard to the Milwaukee Bucks two years ago, after drafting Scoot Henderson at Lillard’s point guard position.

With Milwaukee, Lillard’s numbers remained strong, averaging 24 points and seven assists per game. But he suffered a torn Achilles tendon during the team’s first-round series against the Indiana Pacers, ending his season and dooming Milwaukee’s playoff chances.

The Blazers haven’t released details of the contract, but according to ESPN, the blockbuster deal to bring the star point guard back to Portland includes a player option in the 2027-28 season and a no-trade clause.

Under the reported terms, Lillard would not play next season and he would instead focus on recovering from his Achilles injury. He’ll be set to earn $70 million next season between his Portland and Milwaukee deals.

ESPN reports Lillard and the Trail Blazers were seeking a comeback in recent weeks, with multiple meetings including general manager Joe Cronin and head coach Chauncey Billups.

Lillard will be a senior member of one of the youngest teams in the NBA.

The news comes as the Paul Allen Estate is looking to sell the Blazers.

Sean Highkin is a journalist with the Rose Garden Report, and joined OPB’s “All Things Considered” host Geoff Norcross to talk about Lillard’s return to the Rose City.

The following transcript has been edited for clarity and length.

Geoff Norcross: It’s pretty early in the process here, but what do we know about this deal that brought Dame back to Portland?

Sean Highkin: Well, the dollar figure is $42 million over three years with a player option on the third year and he has a no-trade clause. So it’s a little bit more money than I think a lot of people would expect given Dame’s age and the fact that he’s coming off a torn Achilles and is probably not going to play for most, if not all, of next season. So that’s kind of the financial part of it as of right now.

But it would seem as though in the last couple of weeks after he got waived by the Milwaukee Bucks, Dame and Joe Cronin, the Blazers general manager, kind of got together and ironed out whatever they needed to iron out about their relationship after the way that the trade request went down a couple of years ago and cleared the way for this to happen.

Norcross: Joe Cronin has been able to land a slew of picks and players following Dame’s initial trade back in 2023. What do you think about how the team is coming together?

Highkin: You know, you look at what happened the second half of last season when they went 23 and 18 and you saw the way that like Deni Avdija and Toumani Camara and some of their other young guys emerged.

And then they’re kind of accelerating that earlier this off-season with the trade of Anfernee Simons for Jrue Holiday, and now the talk of summer league in Las Vegas has been Yang Hansen, the Chinese center that they drafted in the first round this year that it was kind of an out of nowhere pick but is getting a lot of buzz and looked, I think, a lot better than people expected at summer league.

So dropping a Dame return into all of that is certainly going to make it even more interesting whether or not Dame actually plays in this next year.

Norcross: Dame has a bum Achilles heel and he is 35. I’m wondering what you think his immediate role on the team might be?

Highkin: Well, I would be shocked if he plays this season, because usually a torn Achilles is a full year recovery — it’s one of the worst injuries that a basketball player can have and he had this injury in April.

So I think Dame has been kind of putting out the idea that he wants to rehab quickly and come back around the All-Star break, and I fully believe him that he believes that that’s gonna happen, but If it were me, I would be telling him, “You are signed to the three year deal, but you are not playing this year. It’s not even on the table.”

You’re just going to use this year to rehab and just fully get back in shape and then next season, the start of next training camp, that’s when they kind of figure out what his role is going to be, but he shouldn’t play this year because of the injury.

Norcross: Yeah, fair enough. Hanging over all of this is the Blazers currently being up for sale, and NBA commissioner Adam Silver recently commented on the league’s preference for the team to stay in Portland. I’m wondering what the reacquisition of Damian Lillard might mean for the possibility of the Blazers staying here?

Highkin: I don’t think it’s really going to affect the sale one way or the other. The team is going to be worth what the team is going to be worth, and a decision like that is not going to be made based on a 35-year-old guy who is coming off a torn Achilles being on the team for the next three years. That’s a decades-long decision.

For me personally, I’m not really that concerned about the Blazers leaving Portland, but you know, as Adam Silver said, he thinks that they need a new arena, so that’s something that the new owner and the city are going to have to figure out whenever that happens. But I think the Blazers’ ownership is still kind of early in the process of talking to potential buyers and figuring out what that’s gonna look like. So I think it’s too early to really say anything definitive on that.

Norcross: Could Dame be one of those potential buyers?

Highkin: I would say no now because he signed a three year deal and the sale is not going to take three years to get done and you know it’s against the rules to be an active player and be part of an ownership group.

When they announced it in May that the team was up for sale, I was told nine to 12 months was a reasonable timeline for it, so the sale’s gonna get done a lot sooner than Dame could do that.

But certainly if he has a good relationship with whoever the new ownership is, then whenever he retires he could certainly buy some sort of minority stake in it. But I think it’s too early to talk about that right now.

Norcross: What do you think this move means for Blazers fans and for the city?

Highkin: Well, it’s something I think a lot of fans are going to get excited about. Dame had been talking for most of his career about how he wanted to retire a Blazer and only play his career with one team, and that obviously didn’t happen with the trade request and the last couple of years where he was in Milwaukee.

But now, given all the circumstances on all sides, they just decided that it made sense to reunite and have a full circle thing. I think it’s something that fans are going to be excited about.