Damian Lillard's 'Basketball Decision' to Come Home
The Trail Blazers re-introduced their all-time leading scorer on Monday.
📍PORTLAND, Ore. — Among the many things Damian Lillard said on Monday evening, sitting between Trail Blazers general manager Joe Cronin and head coach Chauncey Billups in a private room on the club level at the Moda Center, one jumped out to me.
"When we all sat down and this idea started to move towards me signing back here, I'm going to look at the basketball situation," he said in response to a question about the team he's walking into, two years after an acrimonious exit. "We play basketball and you want to win basketball games. A lot of people may look at it as a family decision, and obviously anybody would have their family be a part of a decision that they make. But this was just as much a basketball decision."
Lillard's return to Portland, and to the Blazers, is a great story for many reasons. It's great for Lillard, personally, that he won't have to be away from his three young kids nearly as much while he recovers from his torn Achilles and plays out the final stage of his career. It's great for the organization, as a franchise sale looms, that their all-time leading scorer is now all but certain to retire in a Blazers uniform. It's great for the fanbase that they'll get the closure they never got with Bill Walton, Clyde Drexler or LaMarcus Aldridge when they left.
But since news broke last Thursday that Lillard had agreed to a three-year, $42 million deal to return to Portland, I've been wondering how the basketball part of it will go.
More than that, I've been wondering how Lillard thinks the basketball part of it will go, both in this upcoming rehab year and after that, when he's actually playing.
