Damian Lillard To The Blazers Is AMAZING…

Damian Lillard To The Blazers Is AMAZING…

Damen Lillard is returning to the Portland Trailblazers in frankly a shocking turn of events not that long after Dame’s contract was waved and stretched by the Milwaukee Bucks. He is returning to the only other NBA team that he’d ever known prior to being traded to Milwaukee two years ago. This is pretty unprecedented for a player of this caliber to get traded away from a team and then return to them just two years later. It changes a lot of things about what we think about Portland over the next couple of seasons. And honestly, it’s just one of the more interesting things that has happened in the entirety of the NBA offseason. So, let’s talk about the Dame situation first. When he got waved and stretched by the Milwaukee Bucks, the assumption was that he was going to a team like Miami or Boston, a team that either in Miami represents a location that he wanted to go to when he requested a trade away from Portland in the first place, or a team like Boston that gives him a real opportunity to compete for an NBA title when he returned from injury a year from now. And that timeline aligns with someone like Jason Tatum who’s also recovering from an Achilles injury and a team that a year from now in Boston will really try and add a lot more pieces to their team in an effort to contend for a title compared to what they currently have on the roster. There of course were other options out there for him as well. And there was a possibility of him returning to Portland primarily because that’s where his family is, that’s where his kids are. That was a really difficult transition for him once he was traded away from Portland and playing in Milwaukee. He talked openly about how it was difficult for him to play somewhere else away from his family. And so Portland was always on the list, but from a basketball perspective, it didn’t ever really make a whole lot of sense for him to return there. But ultimately, not only is he going back there, it’s on a pretty significant deal. A deal with a no trade clause and a deal that sets up Portland for a lot of really interesting things over the next couple of seasons. The Trailblazers were already pivoting more towards a win now mindset this off season. Fresh off of a really strong close to the year last year, especially defensively. There was a lot of numbers that pointed towards Portland being one of the best defensive teams in the entire league towards the end of last year. Now, there are obviously caveats to those numbers because there are a bunch of teams towards the end of the year that just were not trying. Sometimes over a smallish sample size, there can just be some shotmaking numbers that go your way and make your defense look better than it actually is. But Portland thinks that it’s real. They think that their core of guys like Scoot Henderson and Shaden Sharp, Denny Avida, Donovan Klingan, they feel like that group is ready to take a leap. And so they made some changes to that effect. They got rid of Anthony Simons. They brought in Drew Holidayiday, a proven championship level player. And now in adding Damen Lillard, they have set themselves up for a very clear timeline. This past year, they made a mini leap. They established themselves as a team on the rise in the Western Conference. This off seasonason they’ve added proven guys like Drew Holiday to take a leap and really push for the playoffs and the playin in a real way. In the following season, Damen Lillard will be returning from his Achilles injury. The young guys will have grown even more and they’ll have all of these pieces to finally put a real contender around Damen Lillard, although this time a much older Damen Lillard returning from an Achilles injury. But still a massive boost to a team that looked like they were building towards something and now look like they’re building towards potentially being a semicontender a year from now. Now obviously that puts a lot of faith in Damen Lillard’s return from his Achilles injury and what kind of player he’s going to be at that point, but I think more so just signals a team that is ready to make that kind of leap. And it’s just a crazy situation in general for the Blazers to in two years have gone from getting all of the assets that they got in exchange for Damen Lillard, guys like Tumani Kamar that are really important to their team right now and they kept the pick that was Scoot Henderson that Dame wanted them to trade for a contending level player and someone else paid for his contract. He was on this massive deal over the following few seasons. Someone else is paying for that. and Damen Lillard is still on the team two years later. It’s a situation that frankly I can’t remember there being any comparisons to in the history of the league. And they’re not getting back the Damen Lillard from two years ago. They’re not getting the Damen Lillard that the Milwaukee Bucks traded for two years ago, but he’s still probably going to be really good. He’s certainly going to be able to shoot the ball. And frankly, it’s just a really cool story to have a guy that was loyal to this franchise for a really long time. They had some success. They made a conference finals. They had some okay postseason runs and ultimately decided it was time for him to move on and now he gets to come back with the team given two years to really build up this young core around him. And really the only thing I can think of as a real comparison is when LeBron left to go to the Heat in 2010 and then return to the Cavs in 2014. Obviously LeBron and Dame are on different levels in terms of you know all-time rankings. And obviously at this point in Dame’s career he’s much different than like LeBron returning to the Cavs in 2014. But there are similarities in the fact that they left, the team that they left got younger, they got better, they rebuilt, and then you just add that guy back into your team. In LeBron’s case, in free agency, in Dem’s case, in free agency via being waved and stretched by another team. And that’s really my main takeaway from the entire situation is that this is just really, really cool. These aren’t stories that we get very often in the NBA. And I can’t wait to see what the Blazers put around Dame a year from now. puts into question, you know, whether or not they’re going to be willing to trade some of their young guys next year or if Dame is just kind of along for the ride as this team continues to grow and improve. And as is stated in a lot of the reporting, the main motivation here actually wasn’t even on the floor. It was to return to a place that he’s familiar with. It was to return to where his family is and to really try and bring something to the Portland organization that’s been missing ever since Dame left. But there is a lot of really interesting basketball stuff happening here and a lot of it relies upon a lot of the stuff they were already counting on coming into the season before Dame ever agreed to return and that is the development of the young guys. Scoot Henderson has to continue to improve for Portland to reach really any of their goals. He’s had a pretty disappointing beginning to his career. Started to figure some things out in the second half of the season last year, but he was someone that was supposed to be the primary lead guard on pretty good offenses and that just hasn’t been the case so far in his career. Denny Avida had a really really good uh really second half of the season, but the entirety of the season really last year in Portland. They’re going to need that to continue to improve. Shaden Sharp has to be healthy. They’ve got Donovan Klingan, got Yang Hansen. Like there’s a lot of things all of a sudden happening in Portland and just add Damen Lillly back into that is really really fun. And I think ultimately this is going to end up just being like a really cool story. I don’t know that it actually has a seismic impact on on the league as a whole. Like Portland a year from now once they add Damen Lillard back into the equation depending on what’s happened with the rest of this young core. Like they’re not going to be on the level of a team like Denver or Houston or Oklahoma City or even the Clippers have really set themselves up well this offseason. But I think it’s just it’s a reminder of the storyline aspect of the NBA and how sometimes things aren’t just about being a contender and things aren’t just about rebuilding in the draft. It’s about having storylines and really cool things attached to your team. And I can’t imagine a cooler story for the Trailblazers from the moment that Damen Lillard requested a trade in the first place. Any scenario that you could have envisioned would have not have been as cool as 2 years later him being back on the team plus them having significant assets as a result of the Dane trade. And part of the reason that this doesn’t happen that often is because there are rules in place to prevent this. Like teams that trade a player away can’t then just go back and get them immediately. There’s a time period in which you have to wait for that guy to return to your team to prevent a team from trading someone away and then having just like an insider deal for them to just leave and come back after also getting the assets for the player. So, there’s a reason why this kind of stuff doesn’t really happen all that often. And there’s a reason why this was even a possibility in the first place and that’s what we’ve talked about in Lillard videos in the past. Like Damen Lillard would be a member of the Milwaukee Bucks right now had he not torn his Achilles. Maybe there would have been trade discussions about sending him to Miami or a variety of teams. But at that point, prior to him tearing his Achilles, he was committed to being in Milwaukee. And what instigated them waving and stretching his contract was him tearing his Achilles and then no longer being a player they could count out at all for this coming season. And then that ends up with the Miles Turner situation and Dame just becoming a free agent. And it’s kind of similar to the Bradley Beiel situation where I think people’s, you know, understanding and the reputation of Damen Lillard in general certainly decreased because he was getting older and his contract was so crazy. But there’s a difference between in Bradley Beiel’s case making $50 million and then Bradley Beal now making $5 million to be like the fourth best player on the Clippers. And there’s a difference between Dame Lillard making like $60 million on the Bucks and then being hurt to Damen Lillard having a year to recover from an injury and making like 12 or $13 million to play for the Portland Trailblazers. This is one of the coolest storylines I can think of in a long time and I cannot wait to see what it’s like when Dame returns when he plays his first home game back in Portland. And again, it sets the Trailblazers up for a lot of really interesting decisions next off season, depending on what happens in a potentially really interesting year for the Blazers this upcoming season as

Damian Lillard is finalizing a contract to return to the Portland Trail Blazers, in the same offseason that the Milwaukee Bucks waived him to sign Myles Turner

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