You'd be forgiven for briefly losing track of your place in linear time at the end of the third quarter of Tuesday night's marquee matchup between the Oklahoma City Thunder and Portland Trail Blazers. How could this be 2026, with Damian Lillard nailing a quarter-ending buzzer-beater from the logo over a cadre of defenders? Clearly we had switched tracks and were now in the realm of Dame Time, or, barring the supernatural, 2019 again.
The Blazers coasted from there for a comfy 123-103 win, in which Lillard paced his team with 25 efficient points in just 24 minutes. Every part of that sentence would have been inconceivable as recently as 18 months ago.
We're only three years removed from Lillard leaving Portland, where he spent the first 11 seasons of his career, under tempestuous circumstances: He attempted to strongarm his way to Miami, only for the Blazers to hold an auction, send him off to Milwaukee, and hand the 2024 title to Boston in the process. Thanks to Giannis Antetokounmpo's irrepressible, selfish grouchiness, the inexplicable decision to entice Doc Rivers away from ESPN for a proto-retirement tour, and the genius of Indiana's Tyrese Haliburton, the Giannis-Dame Bucks were a disaster. They won all of three playoff games in two years with Lillard before he tore his Achilles, after which the Bucks waived him, using the NBA's stretch provision to spread his gigantic salary over five years, in what became a quixotic attempt to put a Myles Turner–shaped bandage over a bullet hole.
Lillard returned to the Blazers for the 2025–26 season, cheering for the unexpectedly plucky team from the bench, rehabbing his leg, and playing in zero games. After that encouraging campaign, the Blazers entered the 2026–27 season with some of the league's strangest vibes. New owner Tom Dundon and his minions spent the summer treating Portland with open malice in a bizarre ploy to either move the team or squeeze the city for a large burlap sack of cash. The organization also laid off a staggering number of team employees, lowballed beloved play-by-play broadcaster Kevin Calabro, and fired his would-be replacement mere hours after announcing his hiring, upon finding out about his old racist tweets.
The Blazers also traded for Ja Morant, which was not a bad-vibes move necessarily, just a strange one. After all, they'd made the playoffs last season thanks to their defense and the ugly spectacle of Deni Avdija running into people and grifting his way to the free-throw line. How could they expect to build on that success by burying defensive ace Jrue Holiday behind, in Morant and Lillard, not one but two tiny guards who would also remove the ball from Avdija's hands?
Somehow, it's all working out for the Blazers. They're 7-3 as of Wednesday, with the NBA's third-best offensive rating of 118.5. The Morant experiment was intriguing for all of 3.5 games before an injury to his hamstring on Oct. 29 made the team more coherent, by clarifying the backcourt rotation and limiting the number of bad defenders for whom Holiday and his fellow good defenders must compensate. What makes the Blazers special at present is that they don't play any truly bad players. Donovan Clingan and Robert Williams III give them great rim protection all game, Toumani Camara can guard basically anybody who isn't Victor Wembanyama or Nikola Jokic, and Avdija is still getting to the line by running into people and falling down.
A critical part of Portland's efficient offense is the play of a rejuvenated, feisty Lillard. The 36-year-old is playing a slightly different role than he did when he was Portland's orbital center. He's averaging 20 points per game—having scored exactly 200 points in 10 games—though he no longer initiates every possession and he enjoys fewer ball screens than ever. The statistical echo of his new role is very clear: His assist and rim-attempt rates are the lowest of his career, while his three-point attempt rate is by far the highest of his career. Lillard is a critical spacer for a team that needs all the shooting it can get, and he's attacking more off the second side than ever before, while still generating free throws at a decent clip.
For a relatively tiny 36-year-old on the wrong side of the most devastating injury in basketball, simply getting back out on the court would have been worth celebrating. But Lillard is doing way more than that, for a team that might matter late into the spring.
