Tim Bontemps questions the Blazers’ decision to bring Damian Lillard back 👀 | The Hoop Collective

Tim Bontemps questions the Blazers’ decision to bring Damian Lillard back 👀 | The Hoop Collective

a feel-good story and one of the greatest contractual maneuvers that the NBA has ever seen. But we’ll push that off. Push that off. Um Dame Lillard is going back to the Portland Trailblazers on a two plus one deal. Two years plus a player option, basically at the mid-level exception, $42 million. Um, Bontemps, uh, great for the PlayBlazers fans, um, for the 2025 26 Trailblazers. I guess it’ll be nice to have Dame Lillard there. We’re going to push the contract off, but, uh, I guess it’ll be a fun press conference. Yeah. I mean, my first thought when I saw this, uh, as you’ll hear later, there’s a re rehearsal dinner tonight in, um, in in Lisbon, Portugal, where I’m at for this wedding. You must you sound stone cold sober, so he must not have had that good of a time at it. Well, I have a young son who uh didn’t really want to sleep, so I spent about two hours trying to put him to bed. Um, but after I got done with that, I walked out of the room and a few minutes later I got a tweet from Shams announcing that this Dame thing was happening. And the first thing I thought was this is an awesome story like you said, Dame going back to Portland. Super cool. You know, gets a no trade clause, which I think is extremely smart by Aaron Goodwin and Dame’s management team to make sure that he has some control over his future because that is a, you know, that’s the kind of midsize salary that could easily be put in a trade later. So, good for him to have that locked in. And and yeah, to your um to your point, um it it’s the Blazers who seem to be wanting to try to win this year. That’s all the indications that we’ve gotten from them. Uh trade for Drew Holiday, right? Trading for Drew Holiday, all the other stuff they’ve done. Um now has $40 million essentially in dead money on their books for the 2526 season. That is a very hard thing to square. Now, the Dane thing in a vacuum, honestly, totally makes sense to bring him back to Portland on a mid-level deal. I think he’s going to be probably at worst a third guard next year. Like, that’s fine. You know, the if he is anywhere near, you know, if he comes anywhere remotely close to a player was before the injury, that’s a huge win for making 14-ish million next year. Um, but I I just don’t really get what Portland’s trying to do in general. Like, are they like they have this roster that doesn’t really make a lot of sense. We’ve talked before about they’ve now drafted centers in back-to-back years. They draft Young Hansen 16th overall, after drafting Donovan Cllingon the year before. Can they actually play together? I don’t know. They have they have they’ve had Scoot Henderson and Shaden Sharp that they drafted high in the lottery the last couple years. They haven’t been starting. They’ve been starting behind veterans. They’ve been blocked. Seems like Scoot’s going to start now, but they also trade for Drew Holiday. They also now have Dane. Even though Dame’s not going to play this year. Payton Sharp I’m still don’t think is going to start as I think a 23-y old fourth year player. We still don’t really know what to make of him. They trade for Danny Abia on a great contract. He’s a very good player, but by the time they’re really ready to win in theory, he’s going to be need to paint it a lot more. They didn’t trade Robert Williams when they seem to have opportunities to and now he’s been hurt again. I don’t think he has any value in the market. I just it’s just hard to really square what it is they’re trying to do in general. And I know that doesn’t really matter because we probably should just be talking about how cool it is that Dame is going back, but you know, I I just keep looking at the Portland roster and the moves they’ve made and I I just don’t really see what the strategy is. Okay, so let’s acknowledge at the start here that it really really sucks that Dame Will Lillard had that injury um when it happened in the calendar which probably wipes out all next season as he was coming back from a blood clot at lightning pace. I’d never seen anything like it to try to help the um the team, you know, try to get Giannis on a playoff run. um that you know he was was a tough situation for him in Milwaukee because he didn’t envision himself going there. I want to acknowledge all of that and I want to acknowledge that he really just wanted to go to his adopted home of Portland and that’s where he was going to rehab and now he can rehab. Like all of that is cool. If you’re a Blazers fan who’ve really kind of been in the wilderness the last couple of years, you’re really excited about Yang Han Son. Um, my friend from Shanghai tried to tell me how to say it the other day and I still Hansen, that’s it. Yang Hans, it’s very simple. Yeah. Anyway, you have to be really excited about him. You’re seeing him doing some stuff in summer league. So, even though the Blazers are really underneath, you know, probably 10 or 12 rosters that are better than them, you know, okay, maybe I’ll give them the edge of the playin. You know, there’s some things to be excited about. And the idea of Dame Lillard coming back and being in a Blazers uniform where you have great memories of that decade where he led them to all those playoff victories and those great moments in the Western Conference Finals one year like let’s acknowledge that all of that is awesome and and or in the case of Dame unfortunate and he deserved a break. Um we spent a lot of this upcoming podcast talking about the Suns buying out Bradley Beal. We talked a lot previously about the Bucks buying out Dame. The Blazers will almost, not quite, but almost have as much money as Dame and Beal are costing those teams on the books just for this year combined. Dame and Beal combined almost what they’ve got on the books. And this is a a jaw-droppingly historically great contrast. Maybe maybe it is maybe it is just less. Thought it was more, but yeah. No, it probably is just less. Okay. It’s a crazy amount of money. Yeah, I think Dame is 23 on the Bucks books and Beal is 19 and change. So, call it 20. So, 43 and this is going to be a little under 40. Whatever. The point is the point is it’s wild that they’re going to have $40 million in in dead money. Um, and uh this is a historically unbelievable contract situation because this is like I said, this is a two plus one. So Dame is committed to the Blazers for two years. Now I’m sure he intends to not play anywhere else. I’m not saying he is, but he could obviously opt out. Let’s say if he comes back in his grade, he could opt out. So he’s committed to the Blazers for two more years, for which he will be paid $28 million, but he’s only going to play one of those years because he’s going to miss this season. So Dame did a deal where he’s going to get paid $28 million to play one season um with a no trade clause while he is getting $23 million in buyout money from the Bucks. It is a brilliant wonderful turn of events for him and Karma says he should have got it. The other thing I want to say is one more thing. Dame, and correct me if I’m wrong, Bontemps, Dame in fact did ask for a trade from the Blazers. Um, now you can say that it was okay that he did that because they were going another direction. They were skewing Young and I agree with that. But Dame was no longer in Portland because of his personal decision. So, yes, he’s coming back and this is wonderful, but it wasn’t like he was sent away um because the Blazers decided to, you know, decided to send him away. He asked to be traded. So, um I know that it was a bad ending. There was some hard feelings and this will be you know this will salve that over but like um am I being a jerk bonmps for saying that or relation there was pretty weird at the end you know like we’ve talked we talked about it a lot at the time I don’t really I still don’t really understand the Blazers position during the negotiations in the DNE again another thing it was just hard to really follow they didn’t Miami was very interested in trying to talk to them about Dame and they simply refused to talk to Miami at all and you know the Bucks came out of nowhere and got him a deal and like had you know they sort of that fell into their lap and they they did a nice job with it. Um they’ve now turned around and traded for Drew Holiday anyway again which very odd that Drew Holiday and Dame Lloyd are both on the Bucks now. It’s very strange. Um the roster doesn’t make a ton of sense but I’m not going to stress about it because that who knows what the roster will be in a year. Yeah, I know. It’s just funny that because of two torn Achilles for two different players, Damon Lord and Drew Holidayiday, who were traded for each other are now on the rock on the Blazers together. That’s just a strange coincidence, but um yeah, I mean, look, the it it’s it’s a surreal thing for him to be back in Portland. I think it’s a super fun story. You know, we’re going to talk later about Devin Booker and maybe him staying in Phoenix. I think it’s really cool. Um, you know, Dame obviously has had an unbelievable career and some of my favorite moments, um, watching as a fan over the past 10 or 15 years has been the dame shot to beat the Rockets and the dame shot to beat the Thunder. I mean, you can argue that the reason the Thunder won the title is because of Damen Lillard because that shot he That’s a long journey, but I I I get it. That’s a long journey back in 2019. Well, back in 2019, that shot that he hit, that ended that Russ PG Carmelo team like that they they blew that team up that summer. Obviously, Russ gets traded to Houston, Paul George gets traded to the Clippers. They get all the stuff back. It turns into Jayd and uh Chay and the rest is history, right? Um but but yeah, it’s it’s a very cool story and I’m really happy for Dame. He’s one of the best dudes in the league. like you said, stopped seeing him get hurt, especially the way he came back in record time from the blood clot. And it’s going to be really fun to see um the lettero in a uniform again in a year in 16 months or something. It but it is it is just an incredible piece of work for them to get $28 million and and again, I do think that Aaron Goodwin deserves a ton of credit for getting this no trade clause because look, we’ve talked about it. There’s uh there’s the ownership change on the horizon in Portland. There could be all sorts of changes that come with that. Maybe they would want to use Dame’s salary to trade in a year or whatever. And now that’s off the board. And Dane’s going to get to stay there as long as he wants. If he wants to stay there for three years, he could be there for three years. He wants to be there for two, he could be there for two. Um, you know, it’s it’s good for him and it’s going to be a fun story to see in a year and we’ll continue to wait to figure out what exactly the plan is in Portland. Why are they doing this? Could say a lot a lot of things. What’s going on? I uh he could not say no to this. Um, and I’m sure he’s happy to say yes, but he also could not say no. So, I mean, look, couple years from a personal level, I would say the last couple years have been pretty rough. Well, do I just mean just for I think you know I don’t know how much fans know but like his family his family was back well I don’t know how much I mean fans know this his family was back in the Pacific Northwest he was in Milwaukee he’s talked at times about how tough a situation that was for him obviously then he gets hurt but you know obviously everything I’ve heard the brief time I’ve poked around about this in the last hour or so since it happened getting a chance to be back home with his family not having to worry about moving around anymore for being locked in for a couple years back home in Portland. Like all that was incredibly appealing to him as I’m sure it would make sense to anybody. And it’s it’s going to be a lot of fun. And look for a team that really is trying to have Scoot Henderson take the next step as a player. You got Drew Holidayiday and Dame Lillard mentoring them. That’s the one thing I’ll say about this situation. Like have around those two guys. Their locker room will be spectacular. I don’t know how they’ll be on the floor, but their locker room is going to be spectacular. Two of the two of the best dudes in the entire league. And I will say this now owes a valentine to the Milwaukee Bucks organization because um it’s not what he wanted. It’s not what the Bucks wanted, but them cutting him when they did opened this up. And I mean his preference would have been to stay in Milwaukee and you know been playing for a championship, but this is a heck of a turn of events that will apply Salve to the terrible turn of events with the uh with the Achilles. Um okay, well we’re on to the regular pod that we uh taped earlier and um thank you to Bontam for staying up late in Portugal. Thanks to Jackson. Adios everybody. Looking up straight down with the heat. I’m on fire on the

On The Hoop Collective, Brian Windhorst and Tim Bontemps react to Damian Lillard returning to the Portland Trail Blazers on a $42M deal.
#espn #nba #thehoopcollective

☑️ Subscribe to ESPN+: https://plus.espn.com/​​​​​
📱Get the ESPN App: http://www.espn.com/espn/apps/espn​​​​​
🏀 Subscribe to NBA on ESPN on YouTube: http://bit.ly/2yxs3Og​​​​​
☑️Subscribe to ESPN on YouTube: http://es.pn/SUBSCRIBEtoYOUTUBE​​​​​
☑️Watch ESPN on YouTube TV: http://es.pn/YouTubeTV​​