Damian Lillard walked into the Trail Blazers’ annual media day on Monday with a message that fit the moment and still sounded a little different coming from him.
Yes, the big shots are still part of the package. So is the edge.
So is the aura that made “Dame Time” a franchise defining brand in Portland. But after 16 months away while recovering from a torn left Achilles tendon, Lillard said his return to Rip City will come with something he hasn’t always leaned on before: joy.
“I live with a chip on my shoulder,” Lillard said Monday at Moda Center during the Blazers’ annual media day. “I think y’all all know that about me.
But it’s not really about that for me. This year, I just want to have this experience with joy, because the game was stripped away.
I didn’t choose to not play. I had a significant injury.
So I’ll play this season with a lot of joy and I’ll play it with the intentions to do what’s best for the team. I know there will be some big moments.
I know there will be a lot of moments where … it might be somebody else’s night. But I do know that overall I’m going to be Dame Lillard, and I always find a way and this will be no different.
“The mentality that I have is to just play this out with joy and to enjoy it.”
It was the clearest sign yet that the 36-year-old guard is approaching his first season back with Portland in a different frame of mind. Lillard, who hasn’t played a game for the Blazers since March 2023, is returning after a two-year detour to Milwaukee and a season spent rehabbing. He said he arrived at media day at 195 pounds, the lightest he has been since briefly trying a vegan diet before the 2017-18 season.
For Lillard, the shift isn’t just about his body. It’s about perspective.
He said he has spent most of his career carrying the pressure of every shot and every result, always measuring whether he was good enough, whether he could miss too many, whether a win or loss would land on him. That weight, he said, won’t define this season the same way.
“When I say joy,” Lillard said, “I mean, like, I’ve typically played the game carrying that stress of, ‘I’ve got to play good. I can’t miss too many shots.
What if we win? What if we lose?’
All of that stuff. I’ll be able to be more joyful about just the process of what I’m experiencing, a different situation, finding my way back on the floor.
I missed a full season, and being back out there is enough. You join a new team and you’re like, ‘Man, how am I going to find these spots to get done what I need to get done (in) this new system that I’m playing in?
I’m not going to skip over those moments and go stressing myself out about things that I would in the past. Even though it worked out for me, I think … I’ll take more joy in those things, those parts of being back on the floor.”
The change makes sense for a player entering his 15th NBA season. Lillard is a nine-time All-Star and one of the NBA’s 75 greatest players, and he has earned more than $360 million in salary. But he also said the injury reminded him that basketball is not guaranteed, and that getting back on the floor is something to appreciate rather than take for granted.
He said he enters training camp “regular,” with no restrictions and no concern about his surgically repaired Achilles. The missing piece, he said, is timing and “natural rhythm,” and he expects that to come back with patience. Still, he felt something click as soon as he started playing pickup games this summer, then again during volunteer workouts with teammates last month.
“With my style of play,” Lillard said, “I need to be able to blow by people, I need to be able to get into those cracks, I need to be able to stop on a dime and make fadeaways and pull-up jumpers and stuff. And I’m able to do that.
And comfortably. So that’s really all I needed to see.”
The people around him have noticed the same thing. Scoot Henderson said, “I think he’s looking fresh,” before adding, “I think it’s the same Dame that we all know of. Dame Time.”
Jrue Holiday echoed the point more simply: “Dame looks like Dame.”
Lillard also sounded energized by what he sees around him in Portland. He praised the roster’s talent, depth, versatility, defense and size. He said the front office told him about the trade for Ja Morant before it became public, and that he was “prepared for whatever.”
He also said he noticed during last season’s NBA playoffs how many teams had a wealth of ball handlers, playmakers and “true believers,” which helped him understand why general manager Joe Cronin would add another point guard to a roster that already includes Lillard, Holiday and Henderson. The guard-heavy mix, he said, can work if the team stays locked in on the right approach.
“We can be a dangerous team,” he said. “And I really believe that.”
That confidence sits alongside the new tone he says will guide him this season.
The night he suffered the injury that changed everything, Lillard went home, turned on the TV and landed on a segment breaking down NBA playoff highlights. A commentator said, “this is the last of Dame Lillard as we know it.”
Lillard said that only fueled him.
“That just kind of turned me up,” Lillard said. “Not because I feel like I need to prove something, but I’m somebody that gets up and I’m going to fight the fight every time, whether you guys criticize me or whether people say, ‘Oh, he can’t do this, or he doesn’t do this’ for whatever shortcomings I might have as a player. It’s been my life to get up and fight the fight regardless and be willing to do things that people might not expect me to be willing to do.
“For me, (the season is) a success today because I know what I’ve lived for the last 16 months or so, just fighting to get back to this point. So it’s a win for me to start with, just because I have a lot of joy in being out there, comfortable playing, feeling strong again.”
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