Damian Lillard RETURNS! Dame Signed a 3-Year Contract to Re-Join the Portland Trail Blazers

Damian Lillard RETURNS! Dame Signed a 3-Year Contract to Re-Join the Portland Trail Blazers

In today’s show, Damian Lamont Ali Lillard is coming back to the Portland Trailblazers. He’s back. Welcome to Locked On Blazers. Let’s get into it. You are Locked on Trailblazers, your daily Portland Trailblazers podcast, part of the Locked on Podcast Network. your team every day. What’s up world? It’s your past first point guard and trailblazers reporter Mike Richmond. You’re listening to another episode of Locked on Blazers, part of the Locked on Podcast Network, available wherever you get podcast and also on YouTube. Thanks for making the show your first listen. Coming at you each and every weekday, Monday through Friday. So make it a part of your daily routine. Make it your first listen. Tell your friends to do the same. This episode is either your Friday show or the next one’s a bonus show. We’re doing six this week. We had to hop on here quickly because whoa, big old news. Damian Lamont’s Ali Lillard is back. He’s back. He’s back. The greatest Trailblazer of the 21st century, a franchise icon, one of the greatest players to ever wear a Trailblazers jersey, has decided to return home. The agreement was first reported by Bill Orum of the Oregonian and then the details later reported by ESPN. Damen Lillard, who was just a free agent, local basketball player, local dad living in Portland, has decided to return. He agreed to a three-year, $42 million deal to return for the Portland Trailblazers. that will take him through the 2526 season that he’s likely to miss and then 26-27 and if and if he so chooses and opts in 2728 obviously he could opt out and sign for more money or sign a different contract etc etc. Damen Lillard is two days removed from celebrating his 35th birthday. Happy birthday Dame. He is likely to miss all of this season as he recovers from an Achilles tear. He tore Achilles on April 27th uh in the first quarter of game four of the Bucks uh Bucks first round playoff series. He has surgery to repair that Achilles on May 2nd. Later the Bucks decided to wave and stretch the two years and over $100 million remaining on Damen Lord’s contract. He still gets that money. I believe he just gets paid on time just like his normal NBA contract. But the Bucks decided to move on from Dame after two years in Milwaukee to sort of maximize their ability to be as competitive as possible this season or perhaps to um you know to make to make some tough decisions. Uh whether they right or wrong, we shall see. But with Dame likely on the shelf for this season, Milwaukee just needed to or chose to go in another direction. So Dame now enters free agency with the money still coming to him 50 million bucks this year whatever it is and he gets to make his decision and there was the initially reported right away by Chris Haynes of of uh Chris Haynes I don’t believe he has an affiliation right now of Chris Haynes uh Chris Haynes of Chris Haynes uh he reported that you know it’s like Miami and Portland are the two places I would look out for and then there there were some other spots that people were floating around that he could possibly end up I think there was some I don’t think there was much interest from Dne, but people were saying, “Hey, Minnesota could make sense for Damen Lillard.” Yeah. Okay. All these all these spots, right? And then there was some reporting that Damen Lillard, one of the challenges was he wanted to be in Portland, Oregon. And any team that he chose to sign with was going to probably have to reckon with the fact that he one of the hardest parts about him moving to Milwaukee is that his family didn’t come with him. uh you know due to whatever his this relationship with uh his his kid’s mom like they got divorced. They didn’t move with him. They’re here. His extended family’s here. His mom lives here as a bunch of his other extended family lives here. This is Damian Lord’s home in the offseason. Not only are his kids here, this is like still home for him as an adult as well. And so one of the challenges of being in Milwaukee was just being away from all that. being away from home, being away from from your children, all the like the sort of challenges of of of a demanding NBA job is is not only do you not get to see your kids very much even when they’re in the same city as you, you certainly don’t get to see their kids very much when they’re thousands of miles away. And so Dame said, “Hey, if I’m you know, the reporting was like the if you know if if you want to have me on your team, part of it is that I want to be in Portland. This is the place that I I think of as home.” Dame spent the first 11 years of his career here. You know, he moved here as a 22-year-old and left as a 33-year-old. He did a lot of growing up here. He was the most powerful person in Portland at one point. One time he sent out a tweet complaining that there were no fans in the arena during the COVID season of 2021. And by the end of the week, there were fans in the arena. Dude has pull the governor’s office. And instead of saying,”Well, I’m going to live in Portland because that’s where I want to be, and maybe I’ll sign a contract.” And and there was there is like a way in which Dame actually could have maintained his free agency up through the end of the year and signed a contract with another team in the spring and still maintained some of his uh um whatever contractual bonuses that that would come with it, some Birdright stuff that would come with it, allow him to get paid more money down the line. He didn’t do that. Instead, Portland chilling with 13 roster spots spoken for and two roster spots open and money to spend because of the decisions they made, including waving waving DeAndre Aiden and him him giving some money back in the process with money to spend in an open roster spot. Dame and the Blazers have decided it’s reunion time. It’s reunion time. He’s coming back. Holy cow. There is so there is a lot to unpack here that I will imagine we will do over the coming months. What I want what I want to do briefly to close to to to to wrap up the show here because this is going to be a brief this is going to be like a 20-minute program. They usually are about a half hour because we’re going to come back. The Blazers are currently right now I’ve just started playing a summer league game. So I’m going to go watch that and then we’ll talk about summer league game after that. First of all, this puts such a weird koda, a weird bow on the Damen Lillard trade. On July 1st, 2023, Damen Lillard officially requested a trade. By that point in the middle at the beginning of July in the summer of 2023, it was inevitable that that the the the marriage was going to end. It was just how how it was going to end. But based on like the decisions the Blazers had made, the the decision to not trade the number three overall draft pick and draft scoot. It was really about the pick not being traded, not specifically Scoot. Pretty much would have been anybody there. It’s not like Amen Thompson would have saved the franchise, but like um or saved Dame, I guess, but uh he may very well have saved the franchise pretty good. Uh but like because of the events of of the summer of 2023 and some of the moves that I quite frankly that Joe Cronin had made around that those decisions um it was inevitable that that Dame was gone and then four months later he gets traded to Milwaukee and the initial trade is a three-team deal with Milwaukee Phoenix in Portland and the Blazers received Drew Holiday or Drew Holidayiday DeAndre and Tummani Kamaro and a couple draft picks are uh an unprotected 2029 pick from the from the Bucks in a couple swaps. But uh Drew is not part of the plan. He does he wants to he wants to be rerouted. The Blazers acquies. They find out a place he can go and they send him to Boston. He never plays here. I don’t really believe in like the full transitive property of trade. So we’re not going to get into Denny Aavia here in this particular trade, but you can on your own if you like. But the Drew trade is like another subsequent immediate trade that happened with before a basketball game was played and only involved trading Drew Holidayiday. So I I I I think you could group those together as a sort of larger part of the Dame trade. Drew goes to Boston. The Blazers acquire Malcolm Brogden, Robert Williams, a 2024 first round pick and a 2029 unprotected pick from the Celtics. Brogden and a couple of the picks acquired in this trade would eventually be used to trade for Denny Aavia. In my mind, not part of the Dame package, but you could see why it would be easy. Then this summer, the Blazers traded Afford Freaking Simons for Drew Holiday, acquiring him a second time. And then a few weeks later, they signed Damen Lillard. They just acquired the player they traded Dame for and brought Dame back in the same summer. The total package for what they sent out and what came back for Dame is like if you really want to get into it, it’s like Ysef Nerkich, Anthony Simons, Nazir Little, and Keon Johnson. They traded those four players to end up with, in the very least, depending on how you want to count it, Drew Holidayiday, Tammani Kamar, and Damen Lillard two years later. It’s wild. I also want to address something and we’ll do that after the break here. A couple weeks ago on this very podcast, I said that it wasn’t time for Damian Lillard to return. I I I sat here and shared my opinion that now this off season when Dame entered free agency, this was not the time to bring Damen Lillard back. I want to reckon with that and talk about what this move means for the Blazers moving forward. Um because I I while my opinion probably hasn’t changed, the reality has and it’s time to reckon with with that. Join me in that second segment, won’t you? All right. Still a pass first point guard. Still Mike Richmond. Still listen to Lockdown Blaze. Still talking to Damen Lillard. Um Dame Lord entered free agency and I sat here writing the show said he got waved and it’s not time to bring the Blazer not time to bring him back. And I I recognize that many of you would disagree with me and that like that is not a that maybe not a widely held opinion, but my my opinion was based around this idea. Um and I it’s time to reckon with that opinion, right? because Jamie Lord is like he’s on the basketball team, right? He’s going to be back. Um he’s he’s he’s probably the most powerful person in the organization again. More on that in a moment. But so like my my my reticence for the Blazers to resign Dame was that some of their other moves had finally given them this sort of clear valuation path, right? They had always had like a Simons in front of Scoot Henderson. So there was like a gap on how much Scoot could play. And because they had ants and because they had some other, you know, other guys in front of him, they were just it wasn’t always clean. And by swapping Simons for Drew Holiday, Drew is a little bit older, also 35. It’s like, well, aunt at 26, it’s weird, you know? It’s like it’s cleaner maybe he’s turned 27, but like whatever. Like in his physical prime and with the relationship he has with the team and the longevity, it’s weird to be like, okay, you’re going to move to a bench role, not because you’re worse, but because we really want to see this young guy thrive. And my thinking was like, well, with Drew there, it’s just it takes out some of like the the sort of like the political challenges of dealing with an incumbent player, someone who has like a standing history with with the organization like Ant does. And my idea was now you have this clear evaluation situation, right? Um, in a way that you hadn’t in previous seasons and you can like you can actually find out what you have. And if you find out that, you know, Scoot Henderson and Shane Sharp aren’t any good, fine. But at least you gave them like clear open runway to do so. And so not only, you know, even recognizing that Dame wouldn’t play this season in that particular show, it is like it puts everyone knows the score of the game, right? Uh when you make these decisions, it’s not like it it might not impact anyone on the court in October or November, December. It might not the whole the whole next season, right? Dame’s unlikely to play next season, but the looming over you, the idea, the like sort of lack of franchise commitment, the not the lack of clarity, the lack of clear of clear process. To me, that was they had finally given themselves an opportunity to have this clear clear way to evaluate their youngsters. And for me, I was against it because it’s like, yeah, Dame should come back at some point, but not now. It doesn’t make sense now. That was my whole argument. They don’t agree. They don’t They simply do not agree. Um and and quite frankly, this has been a trend with some of my preferences versus the organization is that like I have said, go young, commit to it, do all this, and they just don’t want to do that. Now, Dame’s not going to play this season. Um he’s he just turned 35 in July. Uh July 15th is his birthday. I think he’s the only NBA player whose birthday I know off the top of my head. Happy birthday, Dame. Our cancer king. Um, so he’s likely to miss all this year. So that means he’ll come back at age 36 next year. His his birthday will also be July 15th in 2026. He’ll be he’ll be 36. He’ll be entering his 14th playing season. 15th season in the league, but 14th playing season. And he’ll have that year under contract and the following year. The following year is a team option. Uh, excuse me, a player option rather. Uh, what what that allows Dame to do is one, have some leverage, right? He can’t just be it’s like if he’s no he can’t be just plopped off into nowhere. He can decide to opt in and be part of things and come back for his age 36 and age 37 season in Portland if he chooses to do so. It also allows him to if he does play well opt out and sign for some more money. Dame even last year I I think one of the the big challenges for Damon Milwaukee is he just never was Damen Lillard. Dame is is a give me the ball, let me run, pick and roll, let me dictate the tempo and all of those things. And he just never got to play like himself. Even when he played well and last year, he averaged like 24 and seven and made an all-star team. He was pretty good. Uh but like he never looked like Portland Dame. He was always some he was always like, you know, playing in someone else’s world, right, with with Giannis. It just the the the it never gelled. He’ll be back in a place where he gets to be that guy, assuming that he is capable of being that guy. And there’s no reason to think that the Blazers won’t give him every opportunity to be that guy. The idea that he’ll come back at age 36 and like be Scoot Henderson’s backup is wild. Don’t kid yourself. Do not kid yourself. You do not make this commitment. You don’t not not financially, not for the years, not with the player option unless you are saying, “Dame, we are so happy to have you.” And I think that that’s what this is and that’s how it should be celebrated. I think there is some, you know, my my preferences uh laid out in front of you. It’s like, yeah, this does cloud the future of Sterling Scoot Henderson to some extent, maybe a a full extent, adding Drew Holidayiday and Damen Lillard in one off seasonason, two 35-year-old guards, right? Like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I certainly that that seems to um suggest a certain type of way the the franchise feels about Scoot, but that’s not going to come up immediately. and Scoot will have a a chance to have a defiantly excellent season in the face of a franchise that is not committed to him meaningfully. But I think also like what what what is should be sort of the takeaway here is that this is what both sides wanted. Nothing about this suggests that the Blazers tried to like figure out a way to sneaky lowball Damian Lillard, right? They gave him 42 million bucks across three seasons. Um, you know, this is like a a chunk of basically the the rest of the money they had to spend. Pretty much guarantees they will not be carrying a 15th player into the I haven’t done the full math, but pretty unlikely they’ll be carrying a 15th player into the season. So, this is this is their team. Um, you know, maybe they’ll they’ll they’ll maybe they’ll sign a minimum guy to a to a non-G guaranteed contract and and uh and and make that work. That but that’s like the room they have uh most likely with this situation. Um, and it all it means like because Dame wanted this, you know, I mentioned on that show that I recorded when I said like I don’t think they should bring Dame back. It’s like anyone I talked to someone who knew Dame who knows Dame super super well and what they told me was Damian Lord wants to come back and Damon Lorden publicly said that he had envisioned playing in Portland again in the future. Like privately he was telling the people close to him, I want to be back in Portland. He lives here. His kids are here. He wanted to come back and the Blazers wanted him too. This was a reunion made by both sides having real interest in getting it done. And what it means for you is you get to cheer for Dame again. I have said that I think Damen Lillard the last two seasons was the most popular Portland Trailblazer. He just happened to play for the Milwaukee Bucks. Now there isn’t this weird thing where he plays for another team and he comes back a visitor and you have to debate his like how you feel about rooting for other teams, etc., etc. This is just a dude you can root for. He’s your guy. He’s been your guy. He spent 11 years being the guy, being the most brutally loyal, probably to a fault, quite frankly, uh, player to Portland. He was the the argument for him being the greatest trailblazer of all time over Clyde Drexler basically boiled down to that loyalty because Dame because Portland means something to Dame the way Portland means nothing to to Clyde Drexler. Um, it it was about the soft stuff and this is a commitment to that is a commitment to the to the to that uh relationship. It is a commitment to Damian’s like true love and appreciation for what it means to be a Portland Trailblazer. What it means to play basketball in this city, what it means to play basketball in the in the building in the Mot Center, Nay Rose Garden, like what it means to be the to be the guy here. And it’s going to take a little while before we see him back on the basketball court, but the team committed to him for real. He with choices to go basically anywhere he could want chose to come back here and be king again. It’s worth celebrating today. I think there are funky stuff that might happen down the line and we’ll talk all about the funky stuff in the future. But today, day one, afternoon one, evening one of the Damen Lloyd experience, welcome home. Blazers play. They’re playing right now. Um, I’m going to catch up to it. I got to record it. I’m going catch up to it. They’re playing a uh a summer league game. I’m going to talk all about that and we’ll talk Yon Hansen and and the and crew um after that game wraps. So, come back to the feed. Wherever you are watching or listening to this, come back to that feed and we will do it again. I appreciate you listening. Tell your friends about the program. I’ll talk to you soon. [Music]

He’s baaaaaaaaaaaack

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