Hail Dame

Good morning. We start with the unfortunate injury news about Damian Lillard before checking in with how the recently separated Miami Heat and Jimmy Butler are doing. Let's basketball.

As we all feared, Damian Lillard suffered a torn Achilles in the Bucks' home loss to the Pacers on Sunday night. He'll likely miss all of next season; if he does return in 2025-26, it'd be late in the season and history shows a pretty rough few months when rushing it. Given Lillard's age (34), there's a strong likelihood that he will not be remotely the same player when he does return to action. Kobe Bryant was the same age as Dame when he tore his Achilles in 2013, and despite a swift return to action, the remainder of Kobe's career was plagued with knee problems.

Lillard will almost assuredly get back on the court. First, he's under contract for two more seasons. Second, Dame is a prideful player who surely sees this more as a setback for his post-Portland career, not a death sentence for his career. Whether it happens sometime next season or to open the 2026-27 campaign, it'll be nice to see him on the court again. It's always nice to see Dame on the court.

That's been the running theme of his Hall of Fame career: it's always nice to watch Damian Lillard play basketball.

The Lillard era in Portland was a miracle of sorts. Consider it this way: the late 2000s Blazers had a No. 1 overall pick (Greg Oden), a No. 2 overall pick (LaMarcus Aldridge) and a No. 6 overall pick (Brandon Roy). That edition of the team never won a single playoff series before Oden and Roy faded away.

The Blazers, struggling with just Aldridge and a cast of roleplayers remaining, traded Gerald Wallace to the desperate Nets for a top-3 protected pick. Brooklyn was trying to build a roster around Deron Williams and Brook Lopez. Wallace (one of the most underrated players of this era) fit on paper. He did not fit on a basketball court. The Nets stunk, and the pick became the No. 6 overall in 2012. The Kings, who desperately needed a point guard, took Thomas Robinson at No. 5. Lillard fell to Portland. In his second season, the Blazers won a playoff series. They would go on to win four series during the Lillard era, even with Aldridge moving on a couple years in.

The Blazers were never a true blue contender during Dame's time, but they were always in the playoff mix and always entertaining. There's something to be said for that: to merely be pretty good and relevant. There's a beauty in that middle path in lieu of the en vogue feast-or-famine model perfected by the Thunder, Cavaliers and Sixers. (Well, I'm not sure the Sixers have perfected the feast part.)

Ironically, the Bucks have always leaned toward that model as well: an unintentional tank in the mid-2010s made them briefly bad enough to let a curious Greek kid explore the outer reaches of his talents. That kid became Giannis Antetokounmpo, a very different player than Lillard with similar results. You put him on a team and it will be at minimum pretty good and highly entertaining. Luckily for the fine people of Wisconsin, the Bucks were able to put the right supporting cast around him and claim a championship, something Portland just couldn't nail down with Dame. (It's also worth noting that Giannis is a tier above Dame in terms of individual impact.)

Lillard then became a potential second-act solution for Milwaukee, but that's toast now. The question that will dominate the summer (unless it's resolved more quickly) is whether Giannis in 2025 has reached the Dame in 2023 moment. Is it time to move on in the way it was time for Dame to move on? If so, is Giannis a second-act solution for another star? (That's tough to imagine given that he's the second or third best player in the world. Almost anywhere he goes, he instantly becomes the centerpiece.) Or is he the centerpiece of something fresh? (It always comes back to the Nets.)

This is a crossroads for a whole section of the league, but it might be the end of the road for Dame. It was always nice to watch him play, and I can't wait to see him out there again, in whatever form it takes.